Home Office Research Study 275 - Politieacademie.nl

Home Office Research Study 275

Offending in England and Wales:First results from the 2003 Crime and Justice Survey

Tracey Budd, Clare Sharp and Pat Mayhew

The views expressed in this report are those of the authors, not necessarily those of the Home Office (nor do they reflect government policy).

Home Office Research, Development and Statistics DirectorateJanuary 2005

Home Office Research Studies

The Home Office Research Studies are reports on research undertaken by or on behalf ofthe Home Office. They cover the range of subjects for which the Home Secre t a ry hasre s p o n s i b i l i t y. Other publications produced by the Research, Development and StatisticsDirectorate include Findings, Statistical Bulletins and Statistical Papers.

The Research, Development and Statistics Directorate

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RDS is also part of National Statistics (NS). One of the aims of NS is to inform Parliament andthe citizen about the state of the nation and provide a window on the work and perf o rm a n c eof government, allowing the impact of government policies and actions to be assessed.

T h e re f o re –

R e s e a rch Development and Statistics Directorate exists to improve policy making, decisiontaking and practice in support of the Home Office purpose and aims, to provide the public andParliament with information necessary for informed debate and to publish information forfuture use.

First published 2004Application for reproduction should be made to the Communications and Development Unit,Room 201, Home Office, 50 Queen Anne’s Gate, London SW1H 9AT.© Crown copyright 2005 ISBN 1 84473 541 9

ISSN 0072 6435

Offending in England and Wales: First results from the 2003 Crime and Justice Survey

Foreword

The Crime and Justice Survey is a new national self-report offending survey. It provides thefirst national self-report evidence on offending levels amongst the general population agedten to 65 living in private households in England and Wales.

The survey shows that offending in the general population is uncommon with one in tencommitting an offence covered by the survey in the last year. Offending is highest during theteenage years, with males being more likely to offend than females. However, even amongthis group many only offend infrequently or commit relatively trivial offences. A minority ofoffenders, though, are highly prolific and account for the vast majority offences measured.Ta rgeting these prolific offenders and those most likely to become prolific offenders willtherefore be an important feature of strategies to reduce crime.

The survey also shows that although most offences are not formally sanctioned a substantialminority of offenders, particularly the most serious or prolific, have contact with the criminaljustice system at some point.

Future waves of the survey will follow up young people aged ten to 25. This will provideevidence on how offending 'careers' develop and change over time and allow furt h e rexamination of the role of risk and protective factors. It will also provide further data ontrends in youth offending.

Jon Simmons Assistant DirectorResearch Development and Statistics DirectorateHome Office

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Acknowledgments

This report is the result of a lengthy development process and we would like to extend ourthanks to all those involved along the way. Particular thanks are due to Catriona Mirrlees-Black (RDS) and Carol Hedderman (RDS) who provided invaluable support and advice andto Ruth Hayward (RDS, University of Surrey) for her assistance with the data analysis.Thanks are also due to former colleagues Dr. Bonny Mhlanga and Joanna Taylor who wereinvolved at the early stages of this project.

The research teams from National Centre for Social Research and BMRB Social Researchcontributed enormously to the design of the survey and efficiently managed the datacollection process.

We would also like to thank the members of the academic community who assisted in thisp roject, whether through contributing survey questions, reviewing the questionnaire orreviewing this report. These are:

Dr. Stephen Farrall (Keele University)Professor David Farrington (University of Cambridge)Bernard Gallagher (University of Huddersfield)Professor Susanne Karstedt (Keele University) Professor Michael Levi (Cardiff University)Professor Peter Lynn (University of Essex)Susan McVie (University of Edinburgh)Andrew Percy (Queen’s University Belfast)Dr. Mike Sutton (Nottingham Trent University)Professor Janet Walker (University of Newcastle Upon Tyne)

And finally, we extend our thanks to members of the public who participated in this study.


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Contents

PageExecutive summary v

1 Introduction 1Survey aims 1Crime and Justice Survey design 2

Limitations 2Measuring offending 3

The future 5Structure of report 5

2 The Crime and Justice Survey in context 7Administrative statistics on offenders 7Police statistics on crime 7Victimisation surveys 7Self-report surveys of offending 8The Crime and Justice Survey 9

Age range 10Sample size and coverage 10The questionnaire and its administration 10Measuring offending 11

Comparisons with other data sources 133 The extent of offending 15

The prevalence of lifetime offending 15Frequency of lifetime offending 16The prevalence of offending in the last year 17

Gender differences 17Age differences 18Age and gender 18

Number of offenders in England and Wales 20Comparisons with known offenders 21

Number of offences 22Volume of crime committed by young offenders 23Profile of offences committed 24Non-core offences 25

4 Serious and prolific offenders 27Frequency of last year offending 27Prolific offenders 29Serious offenders 31

The volume of serious crime 32An offender typology 33The number of serious or prolific offenders 34The volume of crime committed by prolific offenders 35

5 Contact with the criminal justice system 39Self-reported offending versus convictions 39General contact with the criminal justice system 41Offenders’ contact with the criminal justice system 42

Lifetime offenders 42Last year offenders 43

Offences dealt with by the criminal justice system 44Proportion of offences accounted for by known offenders 45

6 The pattern of offending 47Age of onset 47Age of desistence and length of offending 49Reasons for desistence 50Specialisation versus diversification 52Offending profile 53Endnote 54

7 The nature of offences 55Where and when incidents happened 56Seriousness of the incidents 56

What type of force was used 57The value of damage 58The value of stolen property 58

Victims 59Victim-offender relationship 59Victim characteristics 60

Co-offending 60Motivation for offending 61

The role of drugs and alcohol 62The importance of sanctions 64Views on re-offending 65

8 Conclusions 67Appendix A: Additional tables 73Appendix B: Methodology 101Appendix C: Offence screener questions 113References 119


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Executive summary

This report presents the first findings from the 2003 Crime and Justice Survey (C&JS). This isa new national survey covering around 12,000 people aged between ten and 65 living inprivate household in England and Wales. It provides a unique picture of the extent andnature of offending across the general household population, covering a much broader agerange than in previous self-report offending surveys. The survey does not cover people livingin institutions, including prisons, or the homeless.

The C&JS collected information on the extent of lifetime and last year offending. It alsolooked at drug and alcohol use, attitudes to and contact with the criminal justice system andexperiences of victimisation. This report focuses on offending behaviour. It concentrates on20 ‘core’ offences which were measured by the survey (see Box 1). These exclude someoffences that were asked about in less detail (handling stolen goods, various types of fraud,and ‘technology’ offences, such as illegally downloading software).

All ‘core’ offences were transgressions against criminal law, though they will inevitablyinclude some incidents that are relatively trivial (e.g. a low value theft from the workplace).H o w e v e r, there is value in collecting information about such lower level activity. Minort r a n s g ressions can run alongside more serious offending. Exploring the full range ofo ffending throws light on what diff e rentiates serious and prolific offenders, and althoughindividual offences may themselves be trivial, they can lead to significant social andeconomic costs at an aggregate level.

The report identifies serious and prolific offenders. Serious offenders are defined as thosecommitting: theft of a vehicle; burglary; robbery; theft from the person; assault with injury;or the selling of Class A drugs. Prolific offenders are those who committed six or moreoffences in the last year.

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Executive summary

Box 1 The seven offence categories and 20 core offences PROPERTY OFFENCES

1 Burglary: domestic burglary*; commercial burglary*2. Vehicle related theft: theft of vehicle*; attempted theft of a vehicle; theft from outside vehicle; theft from inside

vehicle; attempted theft from a vehicle3. Other thefts: from work; from school; shoplifting; theft from person*; other theft4. Criminal damage: to a vehicle; to other property

VIOLENT OFFENCES DRUGS

5. Robbery: of an individual*; of a business* 7. Selling drugs: Class A drugs*; other drugs6. Assaults: with injury*; without injury* denotes a serious offence

How many offend?Although a substantial minority of people do transgress at some point in their lives most onlydo so on a few occasions, committing relatively minor offences. Serious and pro l i f i co ffending among the general household population is extremely rare, and concentratedamong teenagers, especially males.

Lifetime offending● Overall, four in ten people said they had committed at least one of the 20 core

offences at some time in their lives. Miscellaneous thefts (e.g. from work, schooland shops) were most common, followed by assaults (split fairly evenly betweeninjury and no-injury incidents).

● About a fifth of lifetime offenders had only offended once; between 35 per centand 40 per cent had done so on four or more occasions.

Offending last year● Offending in the last year is far less common. One in ten people had committed a

c o re offence in the last year.1 P revalence levels were low for most off e n c ecategories, except for other thefts and assault (Figure 1a). Robbery and burglarywere extremely rare. Virtually all drug selling was to friends.

● Out of all 10-to 65-year-olds only four per cent had committed a serious offencein the last year; two per cent were prolific offenders. In all, five per cent wereserious or prolific, and one per cent were serious and prolific – there being someoverlap between the two.


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1. Respondents were asked about offending in the 12 months prior to interview (interviews took place betweenJanuary and July 2003).

Figure 1a: Offending in the last year Figure 1b: Serious and prolific offending in the last year

● Overall, it is estimated that there were 3.8 million active (last year) off e n d e r saged between ten and 65. The number of serious or prolific offenders is farlower. There were an estimated 540,000 serious and prolific offenders. A further880,000 were serious but not prolific; 390,000 prolific but not serious.2

● A small group of offenders are responsible for the vast majority of off e n c e smeasured by the survey. While prolific offenders form only two per cent of thesample and 26 per cent of last year offenders, they account for 82 per cent of alloffences measured. These estimates are based on a sample of offenders in thegeneral population and exclude those in prison or other institutions, for example.Other research has also demonstrated that offending is highly concentrated.

Gender differences● A c ross most offence categories males were more likely to offend than females

(differences were not statistically significant for burglary and robbery). Overall,13 per cent of males had committed a core offence in the last year comparedwith seven per cent of females. Female offending is almost exclusively restricted toassault (with and without injury) and other thefts. Males are more fre q u e n t l yinvolved in a wider range of offences. The gender gap was smallest for assaults,though still males were almost twice as likely to have committed an assault.

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Executive summary

2. All these estimates, being based on a sample, have confidence intervals associated with them. The high and lowestimates are given in Tables 3.2 and A4.6.

● A half of all incidents committed by males were pro p e rty related, 21 per centwere drug selling offences, 17 per cent non-injury assaults, and 14 per cent moreserious violence. For females, non-injury assaults were a far higher proportion at31 per cent, drug selling a lower proportion at 11 per cent.

● Males were more likely to be serious or prolific offenders (Figure 1b).

Age differences ● The C&JS is unique among self-report offending studies in surveying a wide age

range. It supports other evidence that young people are more likely to be activeoffenders, at least for those offences covered.

● The peak rate of offending was among 14- to 17-years-olds (a third hadcommitted a core offence), followed by 12- to13-year-olds and 18- to19-year-olds(both a quarter).

● Taking account of gender and age, the highest rate of offending was among boysaged between 14 and 17: four in ten admitted a core offence in the last year.While girls offended less, they did so at a more even rate throughout the teenageyears – at around a fifth.

● Young males were also most likely to be serious and prolific offenders at around atenth. Among females serious and prolific offending remains under five per centfor all age groups.

● Those aged between ten and 17 and between 18 and 25 each accounted forabout a third of offences. Males aged between ten and 25 (14% of the sample)accounted for almost half (47%) of all offences committed.

● The majority of offences committed by juveniles are non-injury assaults or propertyoffences. Among those aged between 26 and 65, property offences were mostnumerous (62% of incidents). For 18- to 25-year-olds, drug selling was almost ascommon as property crimes (38% and 40%).

The number of offenders and offences dealt with by the Criminal Justice SystemThe C&JS asked people about contact they had had with the police and the courts, inrelation to any offence and also for ‘core’ offences. The results show that a substantialminority of offenders do have contact with the criminal justice system at some point,particularly the most serious. However, it also confirms that most offences are not formallysanctioned, though the sanction rate is relatively high for serious assaults.

● A quarter of those who had offended at some time in their lives had been arrestedat least once, a fifth had been to court charged with an offence, and 16 per centsentenced to a fine, community penalty or custody.


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● Among serious or prolific lifetime offenders, about a third had had been arrestedat some time, around a quarter had been to court and just over a fifth given asentence (fine, community penalty or custody).

● The probability of sanction is lower when looking at the last year. Overall, six percent of last year offenders had been arrested in the period, with only one percent of all last year offences resulting in a court appearance. These figures willunderstate the sanction rate given delays in processing cases, but previous workhas also shown only a small minority of offences result in conviction.

● The probability of an offence being detected and proceeded against varied. Byfar the highest figure was for injury assaults, where about one in five resulted inpolice contact. The lowest figure was for selling drugs, where less than one in200 incidents resulted in police contact.

● Although, relatively few offences result in conviction, the criminal justice systemdoes bring to justice offenders responsible for many offences. The C&JS estimatesthat those convicted in the last year were responsible for a quarter of seriouso ffences re p o rted to the surv e y. This will understate the pro p o rtion of seriouscrime accounted for by those brought to justice since the survey excludes those incustody and will undercount those serving community penalties.

Offending patternsThe 2003 C&JS provides some information on when people begin and cease offending.However, this is somewhat limited by the cross-sectional nature of the survey; further sweepsof the survey will provide richer longitudinal information.

● Among all those who had offended at some point in their lives the mean age ofonset was 15. Male offenders had an average onset age of 15, female offenders16. However, there was considerable variation in age of onset. About ten percent of offenders first offended before the age of ten, while around a fifth onlyoffended for the first time at 18 or older.

● Shoplifting and, not surprisingly, theft from school started earliest. Drug sellinghad a relatively late onset – (mean age at first offence being 19).

● For non-active offenders, the average age when they last offended was 23,although a third had stopped offending before the age of 18. Female desistersstopped offending slightly earlier (mean age 21) than males (23). Many‘desisters’ had relatively short criminal careers.

● There was some evidence that serious and prolific offenders were more likely tos t a rt offending early and have longer criminal careers. Among active pro l i f i c

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o ffenders, for instance, the mean age of onset was 12, while for serious andprolific offenders it was 11.

Seriousness of offences To give an indication of the types of offences uncovered by the C&JS, last year offenderswere asked detailed questions about the last time they had committed each offence type (upto a maximum of six).

● Around seven in ten assaults involved the use of excessive force (force exceedinga grab or push); 58 per cent involved punching or slapping, 25 per cent kickingbut only six per cent hitting the victim with a weapon or object.

● While most incidents of damage and theft were relatively minor in cost terms, asignificant minority were serious. This was particularly the case with criminaldamage. A quarter of criminal damage incidents involved damage estimated atmore than £100, as against 9 per cent of thefts.

Victim characteristics● In three-quarters of incidents (excluding those directed specifically at businesses or

organisations) the offender already knew the victim(s) in some way (just over halfinvolving victims known well). Assaults and ‘other thefts’ were more likely to beagainst victims known to the offender. Only 20 per cent of violent incidents wereagainst strangers.

● Assaults committed by females and young people were more likely to involve avictim known well – about three-quarters did.

● In almost four in five assaults the victim was male. Nearly all assaults by maleswere against males. In assaults committed by females, the victim was more oftenmale than female, especially when the offender was older.

● Three-quarters of victims of assault were aged between ten and 25.

Co-offending● A quarter of offences involved one or more co-offender. Co-offenders most often

f e a t u red in vehicle-related thefts (62%) and criminal damage incidents (44%).Only about a fifth of violent offences and other thefts involved co-offenders.

● Most male offenders offended with other males, but only half of female offenderswhen they offended with others did so solely with females. Co-offenders tended tobe within the same age group as offenders and were usually aged between tenand 25.


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Motivations● Most offences measured by the survey were not planned but committed on the

spur of the moment: about eight in ten were. ‘Other thefts’ were most likely to beplanned.

● Reasons for committing offences varied considerably by offence type. Forexample assaults were mainly driven by being annoyed or upset with someone,while vehicle-related thefts often happened because the offender was bored orwanted a ‘buzz’. ‘Other thefts’ happened mainly because the offender wantedmoney or what was stolen.

● Motivations were generally similar for males and females, though in assaults, self-defence featured more for males than females.

Alcohol use● Overall, one in ten incidents were committed when the offender had been

drinking at the time of the incident, and two per cent when the offender had takenboth drugs and alcohol. Drinking was most common in relation to criminaldamage (40% of incidents were committed when the offender had been drinking,or drinking and taking drugs). It was also relatively common for vehicle-relatedthefts. The contribution of alcohol was, perhaps surprisingly, lower than this forassaults: in only 17 per cent of incidents of assault did the offender say he/shehad been drinking. This figure, however, rises to 37 per cent of assaultscommitted by males aged between 16 and 25.

Drug use Previous research among offenders in the criminal justice system has shown drug use to bean important contributory factor in offending. However, the C&JS shows drug use is rarely afactor, even less so than alcohol, when it comes to offending in the general population. Thisreflects the types of offender (often minor) and drug user (often recreational) picked up in thegeneral population. Prolific drug offenders are unlikely to be picked up.

● Overall, five per cent of incidents were committed when the offender had takendrugs (or both drugs and alcohol). Offenders had most often used drugs at thetime of vehicle-related thefts (11%). Having taken drugs was generally moreevident in property crimes than in violence.

● For offences as a whole, two per cent of offenders said that being under theinfluence of drugs contributed to the offence. The influence of drugs was higherfor shoplifting than other offences, at eight per cent. The figure was also relativelyhigh (5%) for vehicle-related thefts.

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Executive summary

● Another question asked current drug users whether they had committed a crime tobuy drugs in the last year. Overall, just one per cent of all drug users and one percent of all last year offenders had committed a crime to buy drugs (0.2 per cent ofthe whole sample). For drug users who had committed a ‘core’ theft offence in thelast year, the figure rises to four per cent.

The relevance of sanctions● In nearly thre e - q u a rters of incidents, offenders felt it unlikely they would get

caught. Similarly, offenders were not usually worried about the consequences ifthey were caught. There were some differences across offence type. For instance,a higher proportion of those involved in vehicle-related thefts thought they werelikely to get caught and were concerned about it.

● The question arises as to why people who think it likely they will be caughtcommit the offence at all. A higher proportion of those thinking they were likely toget caught said they offended because of revenge, were annoyed by someone,or were acting in self-defence. These spurs to offending, then, seem to serve tooverride an immediate concern about being caught.

● The most common reasons given for ceasing to offend were ‘I knew it was wrong’and ‘I grew up, settled down’. This suggests a natural process of maturation. Thepercentages giving these responses varied by offence type but ranged from abouthalf for those selling Class A drugs to over 80 per cent for those who hadcommitted criminal damage.

● However, a substantial minority of those who had in the past committed burglary,v e h i c l e - related thefts, shoplifting, or drug selling said that being caught by thepolice, or fear that this could happen, was a reason why they stopped. Theimpact of official sanction in deterring offenders, then, appears to be relativelystrong, but certainly not the main factor.

Methodological notesThe 2003 C&JS had a random probability sample design. The main sample comprised10,079 people aged from ten to 65 living in private houses in England and Wales. Thenumber of young people was boosted to around a half (N=4,574) as this is a group ofkey interest (weighting was applied to correct for this in analysis). In addition there was abooster sample of 1,882 non-white respondents. This report focuses on the main sampleonly. Results for black and minority ethnic groups will be available in due course. Theresponse rate for the main sample was 74 per cent. Fieldwork (by BMRB Social Researchand the National Centre for Social Research) took place between January and July2003. The first part of the interview was interviewer administered; the second part


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including the more sensitive questions was self-administered. Computer assistedtechniques were used. The offending count module used Audio CASI whereby thequestions and responses are pre - re c o rded and listened to by the respondents thro u g hheadphones, as well as being presented on the computer screen. This was to make iteasier for those with literacy problems to take part.

While the C&JS is state of the art in many ways it is still subject to the followinglimitations that should be considered in interpreting the findings:

Sample coverage – the C&JS covers the general household population. By definition itexcludes those resident in institutions, including prison, and the homeless. As such it willexclude some of the highest rate offenders.

Sampling error – the estimates are from a sample and are therefore subject to samplingerror. That is they may differ from the figure that would have been obtained if the wholepopulation of interest had been interviewed. The degree of this error can be estimated.Throughout this report the differences identified are significant at the five per cent leveli.e. we are 95 per cent certain that the difference exists in the population.

Non response bias – although the response rate is high for a large-scale generalhousehold survey, it may still be that non-respondents differed in key respects from thosewho took part. Other research suggests that non-respondents tend to be more delinquentthan those who respond.

Accuracy of responses – respondents may be unwilling or unable to provide honest andaccurate answers and this may vary across different groups.

The futureThe plan is for the 2003 C&JS to be followed by three further sweeps (the 2004 surveyfieldwork has been completed). Each will be restricted to 5,000 young people, with thesample comprising both a panel and a fresh element. Each year those aged from ten to25 at first interview will be followed up for re-interview (the panel), while new ten- to 25-y e a r-olds will ‘top up’ the sample to ensure it remains re p resentative. Future sweeps,therefore, will not only provide data on trends in youth offending but also longitudinalevidence on the development of offending ‘careers’.

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Executive summary


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1 Introduction

This report presents the first findings from the 2003 Crime and Justice Survey (C&JS), a newsurvey commissioned by the Home Office. A sample of around 12,000 people aged fromten to 65 living in private households in England and Wales were interviewed betweenJ a n u a ry and July 2003. The survey collected information on the extent and nature ofoffending, drug and alcohol use, attitudes to and contact with the criminal justice systemand experiences of victimisation.3 This report focuses on offending behaviour. Respondentsw e re asked about offending in their lifetime and in the last 12 months. This is the firstnationally representative self-report offending survey to cover such a wide age range.

Survey aimsThe main aims of the survey were to provide:

● A measure of the number of offenders in the general household population inEngland and Wales and the offences they commit, including those who will nothave been processed by the criminal justice system. The coverage of offendingbehaviour is discussed later.

● An estimate of the proportion of offenders and offences that come to the attentionof criminal justice agencies.

● An estimate of the proportion of active offenders who are young people and theproportion of crime they commit.

● I n f o rmation on the nature of offences committed and, in part i c u l a r, offender motivations.● Information on patterns of drug use and links to offending. ● Data to identify the risk factors associated with the onset and continuation of

offending and drug use, and factors associated with desistence.

Although the C&JS measures legally proscribed offences and the terms ‘offender’ and‘ o ffence’ are used throughout this re p o rt, it should be borne in mind that some of theincidents re p o rted to interviewers, while technically illegal, will be relatively minortransgressions. This is discussed further below.

The C&JS was commissioned by the Home Office as part of a programme of surv e y sdesigned to measure levels of self-re p o rt offending and drug use among various groups in the

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3. The British Crime Survey (BCS) is the national victimisation survey for England and Wales. However, because theBCS only covers people aged 16 and over, a module on victimisation was included in the C&JS to measure theexperiences of children (see Wood, 2004).

population. It covers the general household population in England and Wales. By design, itexcludes those serving custodial sentences at the time of fieldwork and it will pick up few whoa re serving community penalties. There f o re two other self-re p o rt offending surveys have alsobeen undertaken. One is of those in custody – the 2000 Prisoner Criminality Survey (Budd e ta l., forthcoming). The other covers those serving sentences in the community – the 2002Community Penalties Criminality Survey (Budd et al., forthcoming). A Home Office surv e yamong arrestees has also been developed. To g e t h e r, this suite of surveys help build a betterp i c t u re of offending. However, there are important methodological diff e rences between themand direct comparisons will need to be treated with caution.

Crime and Justice Survey designThe 2003 C&JS had a random probability sample design. The main sample comprised10,079 people aged from ten to 65, just under a half (N=4,574) of whom were agedbetween ten and 25. Young people were over-sampled because they attract particular policyand criminological interest on account of evidence that they are most likely to offend and useillicit drugs. The C&JS, which is being repeated annually, will also be used to monitor levelsof youth crime over time. A sufficiently large sample size was there f o re re q u i red for ro b u s testimates. Weighting was applied to correct for this over-sampling in analysis.

I m p o rt a n t l y, though, the survey covered a wider age range than usual in self-re p o rto ffending surveys, which normally focus on young people. This allows us to identify theproportion of crime for which young people are responsible, and how offending patternsdiffer with age.

The C&JS also included an additional ‘booster’ sample of 1,882 black and minority ethnicrespondents to allow separate examination of their experiences. Results will be re p o rted later.

The size, breadth and representativeness of the sample make the C&JS a unique source ofdata on offending in England and Wales. Moreover, it was carefully designed to take onboard lessons from previous self-report offending surveys and incorporates some innovativetechniques to improve the quality of the data collected (see Chapter 2).

LimitationsAlthough the C&JS is ‘state of the art’ in many ways, it remains subject to some limitations.The main ones are:

● Sampling error – based on only a sample of the population, estimates are subject


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to sampling error. That is the results obtained may differ from those that would beobtained if the entire population had been interviewed. Statistical theory enablesus to calculate the degree of erro r. Throughout this re p o rt diff e rences betweengroups are statistically significant at the five per cent level (i.e., it is 95 per centcertain that the difference exists in the population) unless otherwise specified.

● Non-response bias – despite the high response rate (74% for the main sample), itmay be that non-respondents differ in key respects to those who took part. Forexample, those with particularly chaotic lifestyles might be difficult to contact andmore likely to refuse. There is evidence from other research that non-respondentstend to be more anti-social than respondents (see Farrington et al., 1990).

● Accuracy of responses – respondents may be unable or unwilling to pro v i d ehonest and accurate responses, and this may vary across diff e rent gro u p s .Respondents were asked at the end of the interview how honest they had beenwhen asked about offending and drug use. The results are encouraging with 97per cent saying they answered all offending questions honestly (see Appendix B).

● Incomplete coverage of off e n c e s – the ‘core offences’ (see below) focus onm a i n s t ream offences such as ro b b e ry, assault, burg l a ry, thefts of and fro mvehicles, and other miscellaneous thefts. But the survey does not cover all offences(e.g. sexual offences4).

● Exclusions from the sample – people in institutions (including prisons), or who arehomeless are not covered.5 Also, a random general population survey will pick uprelatively few ‘serious’ offenders because of sample size constraints.

Measuring offendingThe C&JS covers a range of behaviours from minor anti-social and delinquent behaviours,such as truancy, under-age drinking and fare evasion, to serious criminal offences, such asro b b e ry and burg l a ry. The inclusion of low-level anti-social behaviour was deliberate. Itsextent is of interest in its own right. Evidence indicates that young people are predominantlyinvolved in less serious delinquent behaviour (MORI, 2003). Moreover, the inclusion of lessserious behaviours can act as a ‘softener’ for questions about more serious transgressions.

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Introduction

4. It would be impossible for a survey to cover all offence types adequately. Sexual offences, in particular, wereexcluded because legal advice suggested that assurances of confidentiality could not be given if such offenceswere covered.

5. A study to explore the feasibility of including the institutional population in the C&JS concluded that it would bedifficult, and that its inclusion would not impact on overall estimates of offending and drug use. Since only asmall proportion of the population are in institutions, rates for this group would have to be extremely high fortheir inclusion to have serious impact on population estimates. A re p o rt of the study can be found athttp://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/offending1.html.

The focus of this report, however, is on the ‘core’ criminal offences covered by the survey( ro b b e ry, assault, burg l a ry, criminal damage, thefts of and from vehicles, othermiscellaneous thefts and selling drugs). For these offences, information was collected on thenumber of incidents committed in the last year; the proportion that came to the notice ofjustice agencies, and the circumstances of the incident, such as why it happened and theinvolvement of co-offenders.

The C&JS also covered some other forms of potentially more serious offending includinghandling stolen goods, various forms of fraud,6 and technology crimes such as sendingv i ruses, hacking and illegally downloading material. Far less information was collectedabout these off e n c e s .7 They are there f o re not included in the ‘core’ offences’ analysispresented in this report, though Chapter 3 presents some results.

The ‘core’ offences all pertain to legal offences, but even so these will range in seriousness.They will inevitably include – and are meant to include – incidents that, while technicallycriminal, are relatively trivial and unlikely to provoke much in the way of a formal responseif they were known about (e.g. a low value theft from the workplace). The result is that arelatively large pro p o rtion of respondents will admit to having committed some type ofoffence at some time. This offers scope for the challenge that the C&JS (like other self-reportoffending surveys) fails to differentiate minor offending from more serious criminality, givingan inflated estimate of the number of ‘real’ offenders. This challenge, though, can be takentoo far. This is because:

● Minor transgressions can run alongside more serious offending. ● Exploring the full range of offending behaviour can throw light on what

d i ff e rentiates serious and prolific offenders from those who only occasionallytransgress.

● Although many individual offences may themselves be trivial in terms of monetaryloss say, they can add up to significant social and economic costs at thea g g regate level if a significant number of people commit them, even if onlyoccasionally.

Chapter 2 discusses the C&JS measure of offending in more detail.


4

6. Tax evasion, unauthorised use of a credit card, fraudulently claiming social security benefits and work expenses,and false insurance claims.

7. Many of these questions were only asked of respondents aged 18 and over. They were asked if they hadcommitted the offences in the last year. They were not asked exactly how many times they had done so, norabout any resulting contact with official agencies.

For a general discussion of the advantages and disadvantages of self-re p o rt data, seeFarrington et al., 1996, Hindelang et al., 1981 and Elliott et al., 1989.

The future The plan is for the 2003 C&JS to be followed by three further annual sweeps. Each will berestricted to 5,000 young people, with the sample comprising both a panel and fre s helement. Each year those aged from ten to 25 at the time of their first interview will befollowed up for re-interview (the panel), while new respondents aged from ten to 25 will beintroduced to ‘top up’ the sample to ensure that it remains representative.8

This innovative design allows the C&JS to better meet various information needs. The panelelement will give longitudinal data to examine the development of offending ‘careers’ andidentify factors that contribute to onset, continuation and desistence. At the same time, thesample will remain re p resentative thus providing robust trend data on the prevalence ofyouth offending and drug use in England and Wales.

Structure of reportChapter 2 provides an overview of self-report methodology and the design of the C&JS.

Chapter 3 presents findings on the prevalence of offending on a lifetime and last year basis. Itprovides estimates of the number of offences committed and the proportion committed byyoung offenders.

Chapter 4 examines levels of serious or prolific offending and identifies the pro p o rtion ofcrime accounted for by prolific offenders.

Chapter 5 identifies the proportion of offenders and offences that come to official notice.

Chapter 6 discusses patterns of offending in terms of age of onset, duration and reasons fordesistence.

Chapter 7 outlines the nature of offences committed and comments on offender motivations.

Chapter 8 provides an overview of the findings.

5

Introduction

8. Fieldwork for the 2004 C&JS is taking place between January and July 2004. The aim is to achieve about3,300 panel interviews and 1,700 fresh interviews.

R e p o rts covering the other main topics in the C&JS (and the experiences of black and minorityethnic groups) have been published or will appear in due course. The main topics are:

● Anti-social behaviours (Hayward and Sharp, 2004);● Fraud and ‘technology’ offences committed;● Drug and alcohol use;● Victimisation among children under the age of 16 (Wood, 2004); and● Attitudes towards crime and the criminal justice system.


6

7

2 The Crime and Justice Survey in context

This chapter discusses how the Crime and Justice Survey (C&JS) adds to our understandingof offending and crime. It discusses other sources of information and how self-re p o rto ffending studies provide important complementary data. The chapter also outlines thedesign of the survey (there are further details in Appendix B).

Administrative statistics on offendersMost information on offending is derived from the processing of known off e n d e r s. Forexample, there is information on the number of people cautioned or convicted, by offence,and the number of offenders in custody or serving a community sentence. Most data onoffenders provide a snapshot at a particular point in time, but no sense of how individualcriminal careers develop. An exception is the Home Off i c e ’s Offenders Index (OI), adatabase of the criminal conviction history of individuals convicted since the 1960s. Forexample, the OI shows that 33 per cent of males and 9 per cent of females born in 1953had a conviction for a standard list offence by the age of 46.9 This information isinvaluable, but nonetheless captures only offending which is officially sanctioned. Manyoffences (and offenders) are never formally processed.

Police statistics on crime The traditional measure of the amount of crime committed comes from figures of offencesrecorded by the police. These allow a fine-grained picture of the distribution of crime acrossdifferent areas, but the count is limited to crimes that the police know about and that theyrecord. Routine police figures say little about offenders.

Victimisation surveysEvidence on the extent to which official statistics underestimate the ‘true’ level of crimecomes from victimisation surveys. These ask a sample of the population to recall incidents ofcrimes against them or their household in a specific time period. They give little insight intothe number of i n d i v i d u a l o ffenders involved, since some may commit many crimes.Nonetheless victimisation surveys are important in capturing better the ‘real’ amount ofcrime experienced, and how this changes over time – which itself may indicate changes inoffending levels.

9. For further information on the Offenders Index see www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/offendersindex1.html.

The British Crime Survey (BCS) is the national victimisation survey for England and Wales,and has provided victimisation estimates over more than twenty years.10 The BCS indicatesthat there were 12.3 million offences against individuals and households in 2002/03, lessthan half of which were re p o rted to the police (Simmons and Dodd, 2003). For off e n c etypes that can be compared with police figures, the BCS registers nearly three times asmany as recorded by the police.

Self-report surveys of offending S e l f - re p o rt offending methodology first gained currency in the 1950s and has sinceflourished as a tool to understand the extent and nature of criminal and delinquentbehaviour. The methodology is based on the simple premise of directly asking people abouttheir offending behaviour.

T h e re have been several small-scale, localised surveys in the United Kingdom. The bestknown is the Cambridge Study of Delinquent Development – a unique pro s p e c t i v elongitudinal study that has followed up a sample of males from the age of eight into their latef o rties. It has been an invaluable source of information on the development of delinquent andcriminal careers and the factors associated with onset and desistence (Farrington, 2003a).Several other local area surveys have emerged in recent years, including the Edinburgh Studyof Youth Transitions and Crime (Smith et al., 2001; Smith and McVie, 2003) and theP e t e r b o rough Youth Study and Adolescent Development Study (Wi k s t rom, 2003).

In terms of nationally re p resentative surveys, the Home Office has previously commissioned the1998/1999 Youth Lifestyles Survey (YLS) (Flood-Page et al., 2000), the 1992/1993 Yo u t hLifestyles Survey (Graham and Bowling, 1995), and a survey in 1983 covering juveniledelinquency (Riley and Shaw, 1985).1 1 Each has been a cross-sectional survey of a sample ofyoung people in England and Wales. The 1998/1999 YLS found that almost a fifth of 12-to30- year-olds had committed one or more offence in the 12 months prior to interv i e w.

The Youth Justice Board (YJB) commissions an annual Youth Survey to examine youngpeople’s experience of crime, both as offenders and victims. The survey has been conductedsince 1999. The 2003 survey included a sample of nearly 5,000 11-to 16-year-olds inm a i n s t ream schools and a sample of about 600 pupils excluded from school. Around aquarter (26%) of mainstream pupils had committed at least one of the offences asked about


8

10. The British Crime Survey only covers crimes against households and individuals aged 16 and over. It does notcover offences against commercial or public bodies, children, or those not resident in private households. Itcovers most ‘mainstream’ offences but is not comprehensive – e.g. it does not cover homicide or fraud. Furtherdetails about the BCS are at: http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/bcs1.html.

11. F u r ther details on the Youth Li fes ty les Sur vey including links to re p o r ts can be found a t:http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/offendingyls.html.

in the 12 months prior to interview. The figure was far higher among excludees at 60 percent (MORI, 2003).

The International Self-Report Delinquency Study was undertaken in 1991/1992 covering 13countries, including England and Wales. It examined cross-national diff e rences in thep revalence of delinquency and aimed to identify any variability in factors related to it.Relative to the four other countries with similar sample designs, England and Wales had alower level of overall delinquency (38% of those sampled had committed a delinquent act inthe last year), although the comparability of the surveys remains in some doubt (Junger-Taset al., 2003).12

These studies have consistently demonstrated that delinquency and offending is fairlyw i d e s p read, although serious or persistent offending is much less common. These patterns are tobe expected given that self-re p o rt surveys typically include many relatively trivial incidents thatwould often be considered marginal in terms of ‘real’ criminality. Farrington (2003b)summarises key findings from self-re p o rt studies on criminal careers and the causes of offending.

The Crime and Justice SurveyThe current Crime and Justice Survey builds on previous national self-report studies. But ithas been designed to provide more information than other studies and includes innovativedata collection techniques to improve the quality of the data collected. A considerableamount of feasibility work was undertaken before the full survey was commissioned.13 Theacademic community was extensively consulted about the design of the survey.

The important features of the 2003 survey are:

● an extended age range from ten to 65, though with a sufficient number of youngpeople to provide robust estimates;

● inclusion of a booster sample of people from black and minority ethnic groups;● a large sample of around 12,000 respondents in total;● a sophisticated questionnaire designed to give a better measure of offending than

hitherto available;

9

The Crime and Justice Survey in context

12. The Netherlands, Portugal and Switzerland all had nationally re p resentative samples. The last year prevalence ratesw e re 62%, 57% and 70% re s p e c t i v e l y. Spain, using a large stratified urban sample, had a last year rate of 59%.

13. Two feasibility studies were undertaken – one to test the validity of the self-re p o rt method for the generalpopulation (BMRB Social Research); the other to investigate the feasibility of conducting the survey among theinstitutional population (Office for National Statistics). Professor David Farrington was commissioned tosummarise what had already been learnt from self-report offending surveys and to identify information gaps thenew survey could fill. Professor Peter Lynn was commissioned to consider methodological issues. All reports fromthe feasibility phase are available at: http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/offendingcjs.html.

● use of Audio-CASI to ensure respondents with literacy problems could participate;and

● a sample design to allow the future collection of longitudinal data for youngpeople.

Age rangeMany previous studies have focused on adolescence and young adulthood. The YLS onlycovered 12- to 30-year-olds, while the MORI Youth Survey conducted on behalf of the YouthJustice Board covers young people aged from 11 to 16.

The 2003 C&JS is much wider in coverage, sampling those aged from ten to 65. We canthus examine early development of offending and how it changes in later life, on which thereis little self-re p o rt evidence. The extended age range also enables us to estimate thep ro p o rtion of crime committed by young people. While future sweeps of the survey will focuson young people, the baseline data covering the wider age range fills a key knowledge gap.

Sample size and coverageMany self-re p o rt offending surveys have relatively small sample sizes, which placesconstraints on the robustness of estimates. The 2003 C&JS had a comparatively large mainsample of 10,079: 4,574 of whom are aged from ten to 25.

The questionnaire and its administrationThe questionnaire was developed in consultation with the research, academic and policycommunities. The instrument was thoroughly tested before the full surv e y. Cognitivei n t e rviews tested comprehension, understanding and re l e v a n c y, including among thoseunder the age of 16 and people known to have been involved in crime and drug use.

The interview included interv i e w e r- a d m i n i s t e red and self-administered sections, both ofwhich used computer-assisted techniques. Computer programmes allow the development ofsophisticated questionnaires with complex routing and customised ‘text fills’. CASI(Computer- Assisted Self-Interviewing), whereby respondents read the question and answercodes from the computer screen and enter their own answers, was used for the mostsensitive questions about offending, alcohol and drug use, and family and educationalexperiences. CASI has the advantage over paper and pencil techniques of ensuringrespondents answer all relevant questions in the correct order and prevents them pre -


10

empting later questions. There is also some evidence that CASI results in higher admittanceof ‘deviant’ behaviours such as drug use and offending (Percy and Mayhew, 1997; Flood-Page et al., 2000; O’Reilly et al., 1994).

An important innovation on the C&JS was the use of Audio-CASI for the key self-a d m i n i s t e red sections. With Audio-CASI respondents listen to pre - re c o rded questions andanswer categories through headphones and then enter their response into the computer.Audio-CASI has the advantage over normal CASI of permitting those with re a d i n gd i fficulties to participate without interviewer assistance – thus pre s e rving confidentiality.Audio-CASI had not previously been used in a large-scale household survey in England andWales, but was adopted for the C&JS because of the need to interview children and thep a rticular sensitivity of the questions. It proved extremely successful in practice. Furt h e rdetails about Audio-CASI are in Appendix B.

Measuring offendingThe main purpose of the C&JS is to provide more robust measures than hitherto available ofthe prevalence of offending and the number of offences committed. Key to this was carefuldesign of the offence screener questions to avoid some problems identified in other surveys.

Offence specific screenersAlthough the C&JS covers a wide range of anti-social and delinquent behaviours, only 20‘core’ offences were asked about in detail. These core offences fall into seven broad offencecategories: burglary; vehicle-related thefts; other thefts; criminal damage; robbery, assault,and selling drugs (Chapter 3 gives more detail).

The 20 core screener questions (listed in Appendix C) were designed to reflect the legaldefinition of offences but used simple descriptive language. Some surveys opt for fewer,broader screeners with follow-up questions to find out the types of offence committed. Thedanger with this approach is that the screener is inevitably ‘looser’ and allows gre a t e rambiguity as to what should be reported. Although the C&JS used tightly worded ‘screener’questions to measure offending it may still be that some incidents re p o rted would notnecessarily meet the criteria of an offence if they became known to the police. Respondentswere asked details about the ‘last’ incident of each type reported to try and assess if thiswas a problem.14 There was no evidence that respondents were erroneously reporting non-criminal incidents though, as already discussed, the survey inevitably picks up somerelatively trivial incidents.

11


14. Respondents could be asked these detailed follow up questions about up to six offence types, with the mostserious offence types being given the highest priority.

Respondents were first asked if they had ever committed each of the respective off e n c e seven if it was a long time ago. Those who had committed an offence were then asked howmany times they had done so, and their age at the first and last (or only) incident.Respondents were only asked if they had offended in the last 12 months if this could not bea s c e rtained from the age information. The ordering of the questions was designed toencourage respondents to provide honest answers. It was felt that simply asking ‘cold’ aboutoffending in the last year could discourage respondents from being honest.15

For all offence types admitted to respondents were asked how many such incidents resultedin police contact, a court appearance and a conviction. This was to allow robust estimatesof the pro p o rtion of offences resulting in contact with the criminal justice system (seeChapter 5).

Avoiding double countingA common problem in self-report surveys is double counting of incidents, particularly wherea series of offence screeners are used. If questionnaires are inappropriately designed,respondents can be misled into reporting a single incident at more than one question. Thiswas addressed in the C&JS by ensuring that offence screener questions were suff i c i e n t l yspecific, and logically ord e red. Where appropriate, instructions were also given torespondents, for instance through the use of the term ‘Apart from anything else you havealready mentioned’.

The questionnaire was designed to try and eliminate an offender reporting a single offenceon more than one occasion. However, it remains the case that incidents may be double-counted if, by chance, co-offenders are picked up in the sample. For example, if the sampleincludes two individuals who offend together and they both report the same incidents thenthe count of incidents will be inflated. In practice, though, it is unlikely that there will bemany co-offenders included in the survey.

Counting the number of offencesSome previous self-re p o rt studies, including the Youth Lifestyles Surv e y, have askedrespondents to provide banded frequencies for the number of offences committed in the lasty e a r. This has been justified on the grounds that prolific offenders can have diff i c u l t yrecalling the exact number of offences they have committed. However, it means that surveyanalysts have to put their own figure on the number of offences committed – which poses aparticular problem with a response category of “ten or more” for instance. The C&JS opted


12

15. This decision was based on discussions with the survey contractors and feedback from the feasibility study andcognitive interviews.

to use a banded approach for ‘lifetime’ offending, but asked respondents to give an ‘exact’count of offences in the last year. This means that the range of responses is not artificiallyconstrained and allows a finer differentiation between types of offender. However, it shouldbe acknowledged that some respondents, for various reasons, may overestimate orunderestimate the number of offences committed.

It is also important to note that the C&JS grossed up estimate of the number of off e n c e scommitted by offenders is a count of individual instances of offending rather than of crimeevents. In a single crime event, for example, two offenders might be involved which wouldequate to two individual instances of offending. This is further discussed in Chapter 3.

Reference periodI n t e rviews took place between January and July 2003. The ‘last year’ re f e rence periodpertained to the 12 months before interview.16 This was reiterated at each relevant questionto ensure respondents understood the importance of the re f e rence period. During thedevelopment phase the use of a paper calendar was tested to see if it helped respondentsaccurately recall events in the re f e rence period. Feedback from respondents andinterviewers suggested that this was not a particularly useful tool for most respondents andbecause it added considerably to interview length this was not used in the main stage.

Comparisons with other data sourcesWhile the C&JS was developed with reference to other self-report offending surveys, it wasnot designed to be directly comparable with them. Nonetheless, some comparisons aremade where relevant. Comparisons are also made with other data sources, including theBritish Crime Survey and the Offenders Index, though again these comparisons areproblematic and the results should be treated with due caution.

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16. Respondents were asked to think about the 12 months since the 1st of [month] 2002. So those interviewed inF e b ru a ry were asked about the 12 months since the 1st of Febru a ry 2002. The re f e rence period there f o re diff e re ddepending on the month of interv i e w, but all offences would have fallen in 2002 or January to July 2003.


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15

3 The extent of offending

This chapter presents findings on overall patterns of offending. (Chapter 4 examines howwe can differentiate serious or prolific offenders; Chapter 7 looks at the nature of offencesreported to the survey.17) The focus is on the 20 core offences that were covered in mostdetail to provide a measure of the frequency and count of offending. These offences fallunder seven broad offence categories:

● burglary (of domestic and commercial properties); ● vehicle-related thefts (thefts of and from a vehicle, including attempts); ● other thefts (including from place of work or school, shoplifting, thefts from the

person and other thefts);● criminal damage (to a vehicle and other property); ● robbery (of an individual or business); ● assault (with and without injury); and ● selling drugs (Class A and other drugs).18

While these are all legal offences, some respondents will inevitably, and quite corre c t l y,re p o rt incidents that are relatively trivial, such as theft of a low-value item from work.Moreover, based on a random sample of the household population, the C&JS will inevitablypick up a relatively small number of high rate and serious offenders. Chapters 1 and 2discussed these issues in more detail. Suffice it to say they need bearing in mind ininterpreting the results.

The prevalence of lifetime offending The C&JS estimates that just over four in ten (41%) ten-to 65-year-olds living in privatehouseholds in England and Wales had committed at least one of the 20 core offences intheir lifetime. Males were far more likely to commit an offence (52%) than females (30%).

Figure 3.1a shows the percentage of respondents admitting to at least one incident withinthe seven diff e rent offence categories. Across all offences, males were significantly morelikely to be offenders than females. The only exception to this was for robbery which wasparticularly rare (less than 0.5% of respondents admitted to it).

17. Chapter 7 is based on detailed questions about the 'last' incident of up to six offence types committed. The restof the report pertains to all offences reported at the 20 'core' screener questions.

18. The term drug selling is used as opposed to drug dealing because this more closely fits with the offence screenerquestions which ask about selling. Many incidents involved selling drugs to friends.

Among both males and females ‘other theft’, comprising theft from the workplace, theft fromschool, shoplifting, theft from a person and other thefts, was most common, followed byassaults (including those resulting in no injury to the victim). About a quarter of males and atenth of females had at some time assaulted someone in such a way that they were injured.Lower proportions admitted other offences. Table A3.1 in Appendix A shows the results forthe 20 core offences.

There are difficulties in interpreting patterns in lifetime prevalence by age. Older people willhave had more time in which to offend, although at the same time they may understate theiro ffending as incidents further back in time are more likely to be forgotten or evendeliberately suppressed if the person no longer views himself/herself as an off e n d e r.Cognitive testing indicated that children were more likely than adults to respond literally. So,for example, a child who stole a small item from a school friend would admit to it, while anadult who had committed the same act many years ago would not - rationalising that it didnot constitute a crime. With these caveats in mind Table A3.2 shows the results. Everoffending is highest among teenagers and gradually declines thereafter, suggesting that theprobability of forgetting or concealing incidents does increase with age.

Frequency of lifetime offending For each offence, offenders were asked how often they had committed it in their lifetime.(They could say whether it was only once, two or three times, or more often.) For most of theindividual core offences a substantial proportion – between around 40 and 65 per cent –had only committed them once (Table A3.3). Theft from the workplace, selling drugs andnon-injury assaults were more frequently committed, particularly selling drugs. Almost four inten of those who had sold drugs had done so four or more times in their lifetime. Soalthough relatively few people admitted to selling drugs, those who did had done so morefrequently than was the case for other offences.

While it is not possible to derive an exact count of the number of offences committed, theindications are that almost a fifth (17%) of lifetime offenders had only offended once, whilebetween 35 per cent and 40 per cent had offended on four or more occasions.19

The remainder of this chapter focuses on offending during the 12 months prior to interview.


16

19. Figures depend on whether one selects two or three as the figure for the count of those who committed eachoffence “two or three times”.

The extent of offending

Figure 3.1a Percentage ever offending, Figure 3.1b Percentage offending in by sex last year, by sex

The prevalence of offending in the last year Ten per cent of ten-to 65-year-olds had committed at least one of the 20 offences coveredduring the 12 months prior to interview.20 Again, males were more likely to have offended(13%) than females (7%). Prevalence levels were low for most offence categories (Figure3.1b). Robbery and burglary were extremely rare. The most common offences were assault(5.4%) and other thefts (4.7%). Thus, while other thefts were somewhat more common thanassaults on an ever basis, the reverse holds for last year offending. Similarly drug selling issomewhat more prominent in the last year picture than the ever picture, particularly formales. These changing patterns may well reflect the youthful nature of last year offending(see below), which is more driven by assaults and selling drugs. (Table A3.1 provides fullerdetails of lifetime and last year offending rates for the 20 core offences.)

Gender differences Previous self-report offending studies have consistently shown that males are more likely too ffend than females – although the gender gap varies according to the types of off e n c econsidered. The 1998/1999 Youth Lifestyle Survey (covering 12- to-30-year-olds) found that

17

20. Interviews took place between January and July 2003. Respondents were asked to think about the 12 monthssince the 1st of [month] 2002. So those interviewed in February were asked about the 12 months since the 1stof February 2002. The reference period therefore differed depending on the month of interview, but all offenceswould have fallen in 2002 or January to July 2003.

26 per cent of males had committed an offence in the previous 12 months, compared with11 per cent of females (Flood-Page et al., 2000). Conviction data shows a greater genderdifference, with males between the ages of ten and 45 being about four times as likely tohave a conviction as females (Prime et al., 2001).

The C&JS results are in line with these previous findings. Overall, males were almost twiceas likely to commit an offence in the last year as females (13% versus 7%). Among 12- to30-year- olds the figures were 25 per cent versus 14 per cent – similar to the 1998/99 YLSdespite the differences in the offences covered and survey design.

Females were significantly less likely to commit all offences categories, with the exception ofburglary and robbery which was extremely rare for both males and females. The degree ofthe gender difference varied somewhat across offences, overall being smallest for assaults.This finding, though, was mainly driven by offending patterns among 18- to 25-year-olds.For young people aged between ten and 17 the gender differential was least apparent for‘other thefts’, followed by assault.

Age differencesThe burden of previous evidence has also been that younger people commit most crime,though again the age gap varies by source and offence type. The C&JS is unique amongnational self-re p o rt offending studies in surveying a wide age range. It confirms thato ffending peaks among younger people. Around a third of 14- to 17-year-olds hadoffended in the last year, and about a quarter of 12- to 13-year-olds and 18- to 19-year-olds(Table A3.5).21

Age and genderT h e re are some diff e rences in offending patterns in the C&JS when age and gender arelooked at together. Among males, offending peaks between the ages of 14 and 17 witha round 40 per cent offending in the previous 12 months. Rates are significantly loweramong 12- to 13-year-old (25%) and 18- to 19-year-olds (29%). There is less fluctuationthrough the teenage years for females with the prevalence of offending remaining at arounda fifth between the ages of 12 and 19 (Table 3.1).


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21. The C&JS includes thefts from the workplace and from the school. The opportunity to commit these offences ishighly related to age. Excluding these offences reduces the prevalence of offending among all age groups butdoes not alter the pattern – with offending still peaking among 14- to 17- year-olds (see Table A3.5).


These results broadly mirror those from other sources. Administrative data, for instance,show that the peak age for cautions and convictions in 2002 was 15 for females and 19for males (Criminal Statistics, 2002). In the 1998/1999 YLS, the peak age of offendingwas also lower for females (14) than for males (18). Given diff e rent age/off e n d i n gtrajectories, the male to female ratio thus varies with age.

Types of offence T h e re are also some diff e rent patterns in the types of offence committed by males andfemales of different ages (Table 3.1). The main features are below. Property offences are alltheft offences and criminal damage. Violent offences are all assaults and ro b b e ry, withresults essentially reflecting the former since the prevalence of ro b b e ry is so low. Moreserious violence include only assaults with injury and ro b b e ry. Tables A3.4 and A3.5present more detailed results by age.

● Female offending is almost exclusively restricted to assault (with and withoutinjury) and other thefts. Males are more frequently involved in a wider range ofoffences.

● Both males and females aged between ten and 17 are significantly more likely tocommit a violent offence than a pro p e rty offence, albeit at diff e rent levels.H o w e v e r, if minor assaults without injury are excluded, violent/pro p e rty ratesbecome similar. After the age of 17 the prevalence of violence and pro p e rt yoffending is similar (this applies to both males and females).

● For males violence peaks among 14- to 17-year-olds, at around a third. The peakage for pro p e rty offending is 16 to 17. For females, the level of violent andproperty offending peaks in the teenage years – though within the 12- to 19-year-old age groups there are no significant differences.

● D rug selling appears to peak somewhat later – between 18 and 19 years forboth males and females – though drug selling is rare and the differences are notstatistically significant.

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Table 3.1 Last year prevalence of offending, by age and sex (percentage committingonce or more)

Percent committing … Property All violent More serious Drug Any Base offence offence violence2 selling offence n

Males 7 7 4 2 13 4,67610 to 11 9 14 9 - 20 31312 to 13 15 18 12 <0.5 25 37514 to 15 17 33 20 2 41 32816 to 17 25 30 23 6 42 31818 to 19 16 18 14 8 29 27620 to 25 10 9 6 5 20 60226 to 35 8 5 3 1 13 59536 to 45 5 3 2 1 9 67246 to 65 3 1 1 - 4 1,197Males 10-17 16 24 16 2 32 1,334Females 4 4 3 1 7 5,05010 to 11 3 5 3 - 8 27112 to 13 9 15 8 <0.5 21 33814 to 15 13 18 12 2 23 29916 to 17 10 15 11 2 21 32718 to 19 9 11 8 5 20 20420 to 25 6 6 4 1 11 72326 to 35 3 2 2 1 6 74236 to 45 2 2 1 <0.5 3 70046 to 65 1 1 <0.5 <0.5 2 1,446Females 10-17 9 13 8 1 18 1,235All 5 5 3 1 10 9,726Notes:1. Source: 2003 Crime and Justice Survey, weighted data. Based on all respondents.2. Excludes assault without injury.

Number of offenders in England and WalesBy applying C&JS estimates of the prevalence of offending to the population in England andWales aged between ten and 65, one can estimate the number of people who hadcommitted at least one of the core offences covered by the survey during 2002/2003.22

Overall, it is estimated that 3.8 million people aged between ten and 65 had committed atleast one offence covered by the survey in the last year. Around 2.1 million had committed


20

22. Incidents of offending could have occurred at any time from January 2002 to July 2003 depending on the dateof interview. 2003 population projection estimates for the England and Wales resident population, supplied byGovernment Actuary's Department, were used. There was a total of 19,224,864 males aged between ten and65, and 19,278,566 females.


a violent offence, including 1.3 million committing assault with injury. An estimated 2.1million had committed a property offence, and 400,000 a drug selling offence. (For ClassA drugs alone, there were 150,000 offenders.)

These estimates are based on the accounts of offending given by respondents in the C&JS.For reasons discussed, one cannot be entirely sure that all those who may have offendedw e re pre p a red to admit to this. The estimated number of offenders, there f o re, could fallshort of the ‘real’ number. Moreover, the estimates derive from a sample of the populationand are thus subject to sampling erro r. Another sample may have resulted in diff e re n testimates. However, one can calculate the precision of the estimates. Table 3.2 indicates therange of estimates within which there is a 95 per cent chance that the true figure falls. Sofor example, one can be 95 per cent confident that the total number of ‘last year’ offendersis between 3.6 and 4.1 million, based on the pro p o rtion who admitted offending in theC&JS.

The overall figure breaks down into around 2.5 million male and 1.3 million femaleoffenders in the last year. In terms of age, there were 1.4 million juvenile offenders (agedbetween ten and 17), 0.9 million aged between 18 and 25 and 1.6 million aged between26 and 65. Thus although people over the age of 25 are less likely to offend, numericallythey are still a significant group of offenders. Table A3.6 shows the figures for males andfemales of different age groups, with confidence intervals.

Table 3.2 Number of offenders in England and Wales (in millions) Number committing… Best estimate Lowest estimate Highest estimate

Any offence in last 12 months 3.8 3.6 4.1Violent offence in last 12 months 2.1 1.9 2.3Property offence in last 12 months 2.1 1.9 2.3Drug selling in last 12 months 0.4 0.3 0.5

Notes:1. S o u rce: 2003 Crime and Justice Surv e y, weighted data. Lowest and highest estimates based on 95%

confidence interval range.

Comparisons with known offendersIt is difficult to compare C&JS estimates with figures of known offenders. First, criminaljustice statistics usually count offending events rather than offenders. They therefore overstatethe number of people convicted or cautioned, since some could have offended more thanonce. Second, and conversely, such statistics will undercount offenders unless all thoseinvolved in an incident are cautioned or convicted, which will not always be the case.

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Despite these difficulties, it is clear that the C&JS gives a far higher estimate of the numberof offenders than statistics from the criminal justice system. There were around 400,000cautions or convictions in 2002 for the types of offence covered in the C&JS,23 comparedwith the 3.8 million estimate from the C&JS. This is to be expected. The C&JS will include alarge number of people who have only committed relatively minor offences that never cometo the attention of the police, and which might not necessarily have resulted in a form a lresponse if they had.

Number of offences Thus far the focus has been on the pro p o rtion and number of offenders in England and Wa l e sliving in private households. It is also possible to estimate the rate of offending in the sample.

The C&JS estimates a mean annual offending rate of 0.77 offences averaged across thesample. This equates to 770 offences per 1,000 ten- to 65-year-olds in England and Wales.These include the 20 ‘core’ offences against individuals, households and org a n i s a t i o n scovered by the survey, but will not be a full count of crime because not all types of offenceare covered. At the same time, many minor offences will be included and some incidentsthat will have taken place outside England and Wales.24 The estimate is also subject to arelatively wide margin of error. There is a 95 per cent chance that – based on offencesrespondents were prepared to admit to – the ‘true’ number of offences committed per 1,000population lies between 560 and 980.

It is reasonable to ask how C&JS offence estimates compare with British Crime Survey crimeestimates. In fact, though, the comparison is difficult for a number of reasons. First, the BCScovers crime events in England and Wales, while the C&JS covers individual instances ofo ffending some of which may have occurred outside England and Wa l e s .2 5 Second, theo ffence coverage differs in the two surveys, though this can be controlled for to somee x t e n t .2 6 T h i rd, there are diff e rences between the C&JS and BCS in how they re c o rdoffences. For example, the BCS includes an extensive set of follow-up questions to ensurereported incidents are cor rectly classified, and meet legal criteria. This is not the case in theC&JS, which relies simply on carefully worded screener questions which are meant to elicit


22

23. If someone is cautioned or convicted twice for example they will appear twice in the 400,000 figure (source:Criminal Statistics, 2002). The C&JS, of course, excludes those of 65 and over but all indications are that thisgroup has low levels of offending and form a very small number of offenders in official statistics.

24. Chapter 7 shows that one per cent of ‘last’ incidents reported to the survey took place outside England andWales.

25. The C&JS estimate of individual instances of offending will always be higher than the number of crime eventsbecause more than one offender can be involved in a single crime. Unfortunately there is relatively little robustinformation on co-offending available to adjust the estimates, though the C&JS did collect some information.

26. The C&JS includes offences against commercial and public bodies, offences against children and drug dealing,unlike the BCS.


instances of behaviour that are meant to be ‘criminal’. These and other factors mean thatC&JS and BCS results are hard to align with much precision.

However, it is worth examining to what extent the two surveys’ estimates differ – if only tohelp understand the nature of the two data sources. Restricting the C&JS to a subset ofo ffences most comparable to those in the BCS and making adjustments for co-off e n d i n gsuggests that both sources give similar counts of violent crime. However, the C&JS under-counts comparable pro p e rty crime relative to the BCS. This is likely to be because thehighest rate offenders are under-represented in the C&JS sample and are responsible for aconsiderable proportion of crimes reported to the BCS. Evidence from surveys of convictedo ffenders shows that their rates of pro p e rty offending greatly exceed rates of violentoffending (Budd et al., forthcoming).

Volume of crime committed by young offendersOne objective of the C&JS was to estimate the proportion of crime attributable to youngpeople. This has not been possible from national self-report surveys to date since they havenot covered both younger and older people. (A partial exception was the 1998/1999Youth Lifestyles Surv e y, which included people up to the age of 30. It found that theprevalence of offending fell after the age of 21, though it did not report on the proportion ofoffences committed by juveniles as opposed to young adults.)

Statistics of k n o w n o ffenders suggest that young people account for a dispro p o rt i o n a t evolume of crime. In 2002, the highest per capita rate of cautions and convictions forindictable offences for males was among 18- to 20-year-olds, and for females among 15- to17-year-olds (Criminal Statistics, 2002).

The C&JS confirms that young people account for a disproportionate share of the volume ofcrime. Of the incidents measured, 35 per cent were committed by ten- to 17-year- o l d s(comprising only 14% of the sample), and 31 per cent by those aged between 18 and 25(13% of the sample).

Young males account for the majority of crime committed (Table 3.3). Males aged between tenand 17 (7% of the full sample) accounted for 22 per cent of all the offences committed, and thesame pro p o rtion of offenders. Males aged between 18 and 25 (again 7% of the sample)accounted for rather more offences (26%), but fewer offenders (15%) – indicating a higher rateof offending among those who said they had committed crimes. Females aged between ten and17 (7% of the sample) accounted for 13 per cent of all offences. Overall, males aged betweenten and 25 (14% of the sample) accounted for almost half (47%) of all offences committed.

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Table 3.3 Proportion of offences, offenders, and sample accounted for by males andfemales, by age

Male Female Total10-17 18-25 26+ 10-17 18-25 26+

% of all offences in last year 22 26 24 13 5 10 100% of last year offenders 22 15 28 12 9 14 100% of the sample 7 7 36 7 7 37 100Notes:1. Source: 2003 Crime and Justice Survey, weighted data.2. Results are based on the 9,612 respondents who had information on number of offences committed.

Profile of offences committedOf all offences reported in the survey, just under half (46%) were property offences and justover a third (36%) violent offences – 60 per cent of these being non-injury assaults. Drugselling accounted for 18 per cent of offences committed.

The distribution of offences varied by age and sex. Almost a half (48%) of incidentscommitted by males were property related, 21 per cent were drug selling, 17 per cent werenon-injury assaults, and 14 per cent more serious violence. For females, non-injury assaultswere a far higher proportion at 31 per cent, drug selling a lower proportion at 11 per cent.Property offences formed 42 per cent of offences by females, and more serious violence 16per cent.

Figure 3.2 shows how the profile varies by age group for males and females combined.Among juveniles (aged between ten and 17), violent offences account for the majority ofincidents (58%), although non-injury assaults were dominant. Among those aged between26 and 65, property offences were more numerous (62%). For those aged between 18 and25 there is different distribution, with drug selling offences almost as common as propertycrimes.

Looking at violence in more detail shows that non-injury assaults account for over a third ofcrime by ten-to 17-year-olds. Among juveniles, non-injury assaults are most common, whileamong adults the proportion of non-injury and injury assaults is similar.


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Figure 3.2 Profile of number of offences committed in different age groups

Non-core offencesThis report focuses on the 20 core offences asked about in detail. However, as mentioned inChapter 1, the C&JS also asked about handling stolen goods and various fraud andtechnology crimes. The approach taken was not the same as for the core offences. Many ofthe questions were restricted to people aged 18 and over and respondents were only askedif they had committed the offence in the last year. Here these other ‘non-core’ offences arebriefly examined.

Overall, nine per cent of those over the age of 18 had committed a technology off e n c e(dominated by illegally downloading software or music), eight per cent had handled stolengoods and six per cent had committed some form of fraud. The prevalence of these crimes issignificantly higher than the core offences, with comparable figures for pro p e rty crime,violent crime and selling drugs being four, three and one per cent respectively (see TableA3.7). Including the additional offences increases the overall prevalence of off e n d i n gamong those aged 18 and over from seven per cent to 23 per cent.

Young people aged between 18 and 25 were more likely to have committed handling, fraudor technology crimes than older people – 41 per cent had done so, compared with 20 percent of 26- to 35-year-olds and 13 per cent of those aged between 36 and 65. This patternheld for the three offence categories separately, though was less pronounced for fraud.

The remainder of this re p o rt focuses only on the core offences. A subsequent re p o rt willcover in more detail handling, fraud, and technology offences.

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26

27

4 Serious and prolific offenders

The previous chapter provided useful indicators of the extent of criminality in England andWales. However, it did not differentiate prolific offenders from those who had only offendeda few times, or serious offenders from those who committed minor offences. This chapterlooks at these distinctions. The focus is on offending in the last year. Frequency of offendingis discussed first.

Frequency of last year offendingThe C&JS asked offenders exactly how many times they had committed each offence in thepreceding 12 months. Table 4.1 shows frequency of offending by offence category and,where numbers allow, by offence type. Drug selling was committed frequently (as was thecase with lifetime offending). Almost half of those who had sold drugs had done so six orm o re times, with a mean rate of 13.9 offences per off e n d e r. Among those who hadcommitted property offences, a fifth had done so six or more times, with a mean rate of 6.8offences. For violent offences (assault and robbery), again a fifth had offended six or moretimes, with a mean rate of 5.4 offences. Assaults are by far the main component ofviolence, so the picture is dominated by these.

Table 4.1 Frequency of offending in last year among those who had committed each offence

Number of times Once Two or Four or Six to Ten or Base committed three times five times nine times more times n

Percentages Mean Median

Property offences 35 31 14 6 14 6.8 2 628Vehicle-related thefts 60 14 7 5 14 4.8 1 78Other thefts 30 34 16 5 15 6.5 2 543Theft from work 30 37 20 3 11 4.9 2 292Theft from school 41 40 9 3 7 3.2 2 201Theft from shop 37 13 12 22 16 6.4 3 105Criminal damage 57 27 5 5 7 3.6 1 159Other damage 53 26 7 3 10 3.5 1 111

Violent offences 43 25 11 9 11 5.4 2 743Assault 43 24 11 9 11 5.3 2 741Assault - with injury 55 29 7 3 7 3.3 1 505Assault - no injury 43 22 19 4 11 5.1 2 466

Drug selling 23 19 8 9 40 13.9 5 139Sold other drugs 22 19 12 14 34 8.4 5 137

All offences 35 26 12 8 18 8.3 2 1149Notes:1. Source: 2003 Crime and Justice Survey. Weighted data. Based on those committing each offence.2. The number of robbery and burglary offenders are too low to present the results separately, though they are

included in violent and property offences respectively.

Turning to offending overall, just over a third (35%) of those who had offended in the lastyear had done so only once. A further quarter (26%) had committed two or three offences.Thus, the majority of those who offended did so infrequently. However, a quarter (26%) hadcommitted six or more offences in 12 months, with almost one in ten committing 20 or more.The mean number of offences per offender in the 12-month period is 8.3, while the medianvalue is two. The difference reflects the fact that the mean is influenced by a relatively smallnumber of cases with very high values. The median, which splits the score distribution in themiddle, is less influenced by extreme values.

The rate of drug selling is far higher than for other offences. But even if drug selling isexcluded, the overall mean rate of offending falls only slightly to seven offences pero ff e n d e r, while the median remains at two. This is because a relatively small number ofrespondents sell drugs compared with other offences.


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Younger males were the most frequent offenders. A third of 10- to 25-year-old maleoffenders committed six or more offences, compared with a quarter of female offenders inthis age group (Figure 4.1). Among male offenders, the mean rate of offending appears tobe highest for those aged from 18 to 25, while among female offenders the highest rate isamong 10- to 17-year-olds. However, these figures are not significantly different to the ratesfor the other age groups so should be treated with caution. Similarly, although femaleoffenders aged between ten and 17 appear to have higher rates than for the same agedmales, this is again not statistically significant. See also Table A4.1.

Figure 4.1 Rate of offending in last year among offenders, by age and sex

Prolific offendersThe terms persistent and prolific offending are sometimes used interc h a n g e a b l y. Someanalysts conceptualise persistence in terms of offending over a long period, confining thet e rm prolific for high rate offending in a short period. In contrast, some studies definepersistence in terms of the number of offences committed in a relatively short period, such as12 months. In the 1998/1999 Youth Lifestyles Surv e y, for instance, persistent off e n d e r swere seen as those who had offended on three or more occasions during the year.

The main focus of the C&JS was on offending over a 12-month period. The term prolificoffender is used to identify those who commit a relatively large number of offences in thattime. For the most part, ‘prolific offending’ is defined here as committing six or more

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Serious and prolific offenders

offences in the year, although one can examine different thresholds of prolific offending.27

Table 4.2 illustrates this. For example, based on a definition of three or more offences in ayear, almost a half (48%) of last year offenders (or 4% of all those aged between 10 and65) can be classified as prolific offenders. However, with a definition of ten or moreoffences, only 18 per cent of last year offenders (2% of all 10- to 65-year-olds) would be soclassified.

The differential between male and female offenders becomes larger the more stringent thedefinition. Across the full age range, a fifth of male offenders had committed ten or moreoffences, compared with 14 per cent of female offenders.

The level of prolific offending was similar among ten- to 17-year-old offenders and thoseaged from 18 to 25, but far lower among older offenders. In terms of the sample overall,a round ten per cent of ten- to 25-year-olds in the sample had committed three or moreoffences in the last year, while about five per cent had committed ten or more.

Table 4.2 Percentage of last year offenders (and sample) committing defined numberof offences

Percentages Number of offences in the last 12 monthsThree or more Six or more Ten or more Twenty or more Base n

All 48 (4) 26 (2) 18 (2) 9 (1) 1149 (9612)10 to 17 51 (12) 30 (7) 20 (5) 10 (2) 580 (2486)18 to 25 53 (9) 31 (5) 22 (4) 12 (2) 302 (1790)26 and older 43 (2) 20 (1) 14 (1) 7 (<0.5) 267 (5336)

Males 49 (6) 28 (3) 20 (2) 11 (1) 741 (4608)10 to 17 52 (15) 33 (10) 23 (7) 11 (3) 374 (1285)18 to 25 54 (12) 34 (7) 25 (5) 15 (3) 200 (870)26 and older 43 (3) 20 (1) 16 (1) 9 (1) 167 (2453)

Females 47 (3) 23 (1) 14 (1) 6 (<0.5) 408 (5004)10 to 17 49 (8) 24 (4) 15 (2) 8 (1) 206 (1201)18 to 25 51 (6) 25 (3) 16 (2) 7 (1) 102 (920)26 and older 42 (1) 20 (1) 10 (<0.5) 4 (<0.5) 100 (2883)Notes:1. Source: 2003 Crime and Justice Survey. Weighted data.2. Figures in brackets are based on whole sample. 3. Note that the figures are not additive - i.e., three or more includes all offenders/sample who had offended

three or more times - not three to five times only.


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27. The decision to use six or more offences to define prolific offenders was based on the need to have a cut-off thatdifferentiated offenders while ensuring that there were a sufficient number of prolific offenders for subsequentanalysis.

Serious offendersAs discussed in Chapter 1, self-re p o rt studies are often criticised for the inclusion ofrelatively trivial offences. The C&JS core offences all pertain to legal offences, though someincidents may nonetheless be relatively minor. Identifying the relative seriousness of differento ffences is difficult. Some offence types seem more serious than others by virtue of theirdescription (for example, assaults resulting in injury will be more serious than assaults withno injury, and actual thefts more serious than attempts). Nonetheless for many off e n c e srelative seriousness is likely to vary according to what actually took place. An incident ofcriminal damage, for instance, may or may not have been more serious than a shopliftingincident, depending on the degree of damage done, or the amount stolen.

To gauge the nature of incidents reported to the survey, detailed information was collectedabout the last (or only) incident of each offence type committed in the last year, up to amaximum of six.28 This covered details such as value of property stolen or damaged and thetype of force used.29 This information provides useful contextual information about the natureof offences reported to the survey, and findings are presented in Chapter 7. However, it ishazardous to use it to estimate the proportion of offenders who committed a serious offencesince the last incident may not have been the most serious committed.

Thus ‘serious’ offenders are defined using the 20 core offence types. For the remainder ofthis report serious offenders are defined as those who have committed any of the followingoffences in the last 12 months:

● Theft of a vehicle● Burglary● Robbery● Theft from the person● Assault resulting in injury● Selling Class A drugs

Based on this definition, 41 per cent of those who had committed an offence in the last yearhad committed at least one serious offence. This equates to four per cent of the sample agedf rom ten to 65. (In terms of lifetime offending, 21% had committed a serious offence.) Assaultswith injury are the main driver of serious offending for males and females across all age gro u p s .Just under 80 per cent of serious offenders were so defined because they had committed onlyi n j u ry assaults. This was more often the case with females (86%) than males (75%).

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28. To keep the interview length to an acceptable level, only six offences were asked about in detail. For those whohad committed more than six offences, there was a priority selection scheme.

29. The physical and emotional impact on victims will also be a factor in seriousness, but the offender may well notknow this.

Table 4.3 shows how serious offending varied by age and sex. It gives figures for both lastyear offenders and the sample as a whole. Among ten- to 25-year-old offenders, thep ro p o rtion of male and females who had committed a serious offence is fairly similar.H o w e v e r, female offenders aged over 25 were more likely to have committed a seriousoffence than their male counterparts. This is entirely due to them being more likely to commitan assault with injury; 31 per cent of female offenders aged 26 and over had done socompared with only 21 per cent of male offenders of the same age (Table A4.2).

Table 4.3 Percentage of last year offenders and sample defined as serious offenders% of last year offenders Base % of sample defined Base

defined as serious n as serious offenders n

All 41 1230 4 985910-17 53 640 13 259818-25 44 313 7 183526-65 28 277 2 5426

Male 43 793 5 475710-17 55 411 17 135118-25 45 207 10 89126-65 24 175 2 2515

Female 40 437 3 510210-17 50 229 9 124718-25 42 106 5 94426-65 36 102 1 2911Notes:1. Source: 2003 Crime and Justice Survey. Weighted data.

Overall, though, males were more likely to be serious offenders – reflecting the fact they aremore likely to offend per se. Almost one-fifth of all males aged from ten to 17 (17%) wereclassified as serious offenders. Among males and females, serious offending peakedbetween the ages of 14 and 17 (23% of 14- to 17-year-old males and 12% of 14- to 17-year-old females had committed a serious offence) (Table A4.3).

The volume of serious crimeIn terms of the number of last year core offences committed, a quarter were serious. A higherp ro p o rtion of crimes committed by males was serious (28%) than those committed by females(20%). Offences committed by 18- to 25-year-olds were more likely to be serious (35% were ) ,than those by younger (26%) or older offenders (15%). Thus, although young people aged


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f rom 18 to 25 are somewhat less likely to commit serious offences per se than those aged fro mten to 17, a higher pro p o rtion of offences they do commit are serious. Again, assaults withi n j u ry drive this result, since, if it was committed, it tended to be committed more fre q u e n t l y.

Table 4.4 shows the proportion of serious offences and offenders accounted for by malesand females of diff e rent age groups. While analysis of all offences suggests a re l a t i v e l yeven split between males of diff e rent age groups (each being responsible for about aquarter of all incidents – see Table 3.4 in Chapter 3), the pattern changes when the focus ison serious offences. Over a third (36%) of serious incidents were committed by 18- to 25-year-old males, a further 25 per cent by ten- to 17-year-old males and only 16 per cent byolder males. That young males aged from ten to 25 are responsible for a disproportionatevolume of crime is even more marked, then, for serious offences.

Table 4.4 Proportion of serious offences, serious offenders, and sample accounted forby males and females, by age

Male Female Total10-17 18-25 26+ 10-17 18-25 26+

% of serious offences in last year 25 36 16 11 7 4 100% of serious offenders 31 17 17 15 9 13 100% of the sample 7 7 36 7 7 37 100Notes:1. Source: 2003 Crime and Justice Survey, weighted data.

An offender typologyIt is possible to create a typology of ‘last year’ offenders based on the number and types ofoffences committed. Prolific offenders are those who committed six or more offences; seriousoffenders are those who committed at least one of the offences defined as serious above.

Overall, 15 per cent of last year offenders were both serious and prolific (a key group), 11per cent were prolific but had not committed a serious offence, and a further 25 per centhad committed a serious offence but were not prolific.

A similar proportion of male and female offenders were serious or prolific (50% and 53%respectively – the difference not being statistically significant). However, there were somed i ff e rent patterns for male and female offenders. Female offenders were less likely to beserious and prolific than male offenders, and more likely to be serious but not prolific. Thispattern held across age groups.

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So, while males are more likely to offend than females and if they do so are more likely tooffend frequently, female offenders do not differ significantly from their male peers in theirpropensity to commit a serious offence. If anything, older female offenders are more likely tocommit a serious offence than males, driven by their propensity to commit injury assaults.

Overall younger offenders were more likely to be serious or prolific than older offenders.Around six in ten offenders aged between ten and 25 were, compared with four in ten ofthose aged over 25. A fifth of young offenders were serious and prolific (the key group).

Figure 4.2 presents the results by sex and age. See also Table A4.4.

Figure 4.2 Classification of last year offenders by frequency and seriousness of off e n d i n g

The number of serious or prolific offendersExamining the sample as a whole (as opposed to offenders only), five per cent of ten- to 65-year-olds were classified as serious or prolific offenders. Males aged from 14 to 17 weremost likely to be in this group – around a quarter (24%) were. Among females of the sameage, 13 per cent were serious or prolific offenders.

Those who were both serious and prolific offenders are of key interest. Of the entire sample,this applied to two per cent of males, and one per cent of females. The highest figure


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among males was for 14- to 17-year-olds (12% of 16- to 17-year-olds; 9% of 14- to 15-year-olds). Among females serious and prolific offending remains under five per cent for all agegroups. Details are in Table A4.5.

Again by applying 2003 population estimates to the survey figures, one can estimate the numberof people in England and Wales who can be classified into diff e rent offender groups. In total, thes u rvey estimates that there were 1.8 million serious or prolific offenders (95% confidence interv a l :1.6 to 2.0 million). There were 880,000 serious only, and 390,000 prolific only offenders. Thenumber of offenders in the key interest group – serious and prolific – totalled 540,000.

Table 4.5 presents the results by age and by sex (Table A4.6 gives the associatedconfidence intervals). Around three-quarters of serious and prolific offenders were male. Justunder a half were aged from ten to 17. Around a quarter were aged over 25.

Table 4.5 Number of serious or prolific offenders (in thousands)Serious but not prolific Prolific but not serious Serious and prolific

All 880 390 540Males 520 250 400Females 370 140 140

Aged 10 to 17 390 130 250Aged 18 to 25 210 100 170Aged 26 to 65 300 170 130Notes:1. Source: 2003 Crime and Justice Survey, weighted data.2. Sub-totals may not add to totals because of rounding. Figures to the nearest ten thousand.

The volume of crime committed by prolific offendersIt has already been established that the majority of respondents had not offended at allduring the 12 months prior to interview, and that among those who had the majority haddone so only a few times. Only 26 per cent of offenders (2% of the sample) had offendedsix or more times in the year (see Table 4.2). Taking this a step furt h e r, it is possible toidentify the proportion of crimes accounted for by those who offended most frequently.

Table 4.6 shows that 62 per cent of all offences were committed by nine per cent of themost prolific offenders – i.e. those admitting 20 or more offences in the last year. Thisamounted to one per cent of the sample. Those who committed six or more offences (aquarter of offenders, or 2% of the sample) were responsible for 82 per cent of all offences.

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Tw o - t h i rds of offences committed by males were attributable to 11 per cent of maleo ffenders, while just over half of offences by females were committed by six per cent offemale offenders. This suggests an even greater concentration of offending among femaleo ffenders than among male offenders, albeit driven by a relatively small pro p o rtion offemale offenders who have unusually high offending rates. Table A4.7 presents the resultsby age.

Other self-re p o rt offending surveys have also shown that a small minority of pro l i f i coffenders account for a large proportion of all crime (Flood-Page et al., 2000; Farringtonand West, 1993; Huizinga et al., 1995). The extent of the concentration depends on thetypes of offender and offence covered and how offences are counted. The YLS, for example,re p o rted that around ten per cent of offenders (aged from 12 to 30) accounted for justunder a half of all offences. This suggests somewhat less concentration than indicated by theC&JS. However, the YLS only collected banded frequency data on incidents committed andthe calculation of the total number of offences was based on the lower bounds (e.g. for 6 to10 offences the value of 6 was used). It is thus likely that the YLS underestimates theconcentration of offending.

A model based on the Offenders Index also shows that crime is concentrated. This estimatedthat, based on conviction data, there were about one million active offenders at any onetime. Of these, the 100,000 most prolific (those with three or more convictions during theircriminal careers) accumulate at least 50 per cent of all standard list convictions (CriminalJustice: The Way Ahead, 2001).30

The evidence thus suggests that focusing crime reduction measures on high rate offenderscould bring disproportionate returns. Further analysis of the C&JS is being undertaken toidentify the factors associated with prolific and serious offending.


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30. These estimates are intended to be indicative of the concentration of offending; with different assumptions thefigures will vary (Home Office Occasional Paper No 80, 2003).

Table 4.6 Proportion of sample, offenders, and offences accounted for by prolific offenders

Number of offences Male Female All% of % of all % of all % of % of all % of all % of % of all % of all

sample offenders offences sample offenders offences sample offenders offences

None 88 - - 94 - - 91 - -One 4 35 4 2 36 5 3 35 4Two 2 16 4 1 18 5 2 17 4Three to five 3 21 9 2 24 13 2 22 10Six to nine 1 8 6 1 9 9 1 8 7Ten to nineteen 1 9 12 <0.5 8 15 1 8 13Twenty or more 1 11 66 <0.5 6 53 1 9 62

100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100Notes:1. Source: 2003 Crime and Justice Survey, weighted data.2. Results are based on respondents who have definite information on prevalence and count of offending.

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5 Contact with the criminal justice system

This chapter examines to what extent offenders and offences are dealt with by the policeand courts. First, the C&JS results on the prevalence of offending are compared with dataon convictions in England and Wales. The proportion of offenders who have experiencedvarious official sanctions, and the pro p o rtion of offences processed through the criminaljustice system are then estimated. Finally, an estimate is made of the proportion of offencescommitted that involved offenders already known to the system.

Self-reported offending versus convictionsAs discussed in Chapter 2, the Home Off i c e ’s Offenders Index (OI) holds conviction histories ofabout seven million individuals. Comparing OI data with the C&JS provides an indication of theextent to which conviction data underestimates actual levels of offending. It should be borne inmind that the offences covered by the two sources diff e r, and some adjustment has to be madefor that. The OI covers all ‘standard list’ offences, comprising all indictable offences and some ofthe more serious summary offences. This is a broader range than the core offences included inthe C&JS. For example, motoring offences and sexual offences are not in the C&JS measure. Ofthe C&JS core offences, attempted vehicle thefts and theft from the person are not standard list.

The OI can be used to estimate the proportion of the ‘current’ general population with aconviction for offences comparable with the C&JS. Table 5.1 compares OI results for 2001with the survey estimates (the table also shows the unrestricted OI figures for all standard listoffences). Two main points emerge.

● As would be expected, the prevalence of offending is far higher than theprevalence of conviction. For example, while nine per cent of 18- to 20-year-oldmales have had a conviction according to the OI, 63 per cent had committed anoffence according to the C&JS and 41 per cent a serious offence. The differentialis less among older age groups. On the one hand, this may be because if olderpeople offended fre q u e n t l y, they will have a greater chance of having aconviction. On the other hand, it may well reflect the fact that the C&JS is likely tou n d e restimate lifetime offending among older people. This is because, asdiscussed in Chapter 3, older people are likely to have forgotten incidents thathappened when they were young and may be more likely to deliberately concealincidents because of embarrassment or because they consider the incident tootrivial to mention.

● The male to female offending ratio is far less than the conviction ratio. Thus whilethe likelihood of conviction for males aged from 18 to 20 is over four times thatfor females, the prevalence of offending is only 1.3 times higher.

Table 5.1 The percentage ever convicted and ever offended, by sex and ageComparable subset of offences

Age group % with conviction % with conviction for % admitting offencein the OI C&JS offence in the OI ever in C&JS

Male Female Male Female Male Female

10-17 2 - 2 - 53 3718-20 12 2 9 2 63 5121-45 28 6 22 5 59 33Notes:1. Source: The Crime and Justice Survey, weighted data. The Offenders Index.

The OI data show that 24 per cent of males and seven per cent of females born in 1953had a criminal conviction for a standard list offence covered by the C&JS by the age of 46.On the basis of those in the C&JS sample aged 46, 49 per cent of males said they hadcommitted at least one of the comparable offences in their lifetime, and 30 per cent offemales. This difference is not as large as might be expected given the existing evidence onthe level of attrition between offences committed and convictions (see later in this chapter).The relatively small gap between C&JS figures and OI convictions may again signify thefailure of older people to report to the survey all the offences they have committed.

There are difficulties in comparing conviction and C&JS offending data in addition to theissue of respondent recall discussed above. For instance, although the analysis presented isbased on comparable offences this will not be an exact match. The C&JS uses relativelybroad offence types whereas some legal offences are more finely differentiated. It may alsobe the case that offences reported to the survey are subsequently ‘no-crimed’, for examplebecause of insufficient evidence, or are reclassified by the criminal justice system into anoffence not included in the ‘standard list’ set. Nonetheless, the results at the aggregate levelconfirm a substantial gap between offending levels and conviction.

F u rther work comparing the C&JS and the Offenders Index is planned. This will help toexplore the differential between offending and conviction in more detail. It will also throwf u rther light on the validity of self-re p o rt offending data. Farrington (2003b) summarisesp revious re s e a rch into the issue of the validity, concluding that validity is high for youngmales but less established for other groups.


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General contact with the criminal justice system The C&JS asked all respondents about various types of contact they might have had with thecriminal justice system, and whether this had been in the last year. Respondents were askedwhether they had been:

● arrested by the police● taken to court charged with an offence● fined by a court ● given a community sentence by a court● given a custodial sentence by a court

The focus here is not exclusively on contacts arising from the 20 core offences whichrespondents were asked about in the surv e y, but any contact arising from criminal orsuspected criminal activity. Contact with the criminal justice system relating to specificoffences committed is addressed later in the chapter.

Overall, 15 per cent of all respondents had been arrested at some time in their lives, 12 percent had been to court charged with an offence, ten per cent had received a fine or communityor custodial sentence. Only two per cent had been arrested in the last year. Males were farm o re likely to have had contact with the criminal justice system than females (Figure 5.1).

Figure 5.1 Contact with the criminal justice system, by sex

Note: Conviction refers to being given a fine, custodial, or community sentence

Contact with the criminal justice system

Table 5.2 presents the results by age. The figures for the per cent ever taken to court for anoffence are fairly close to the unrestricted OI figures given in Table 5.1 on convictions. Forexample, 11 per cent of males aged from 18 to 20 interviewed said they had been to courtcharged with an offence at some time, while the OI shows 12 per cent of 18- to 20-year-oldmales had a conviction. These comparisons are of course not exact. If anything, one wouldexpect the C&JS court appearance figure to be higher since the OI figures only includeconvictions for standard list offences, whereas the C&JS question relates to any criminaloffence and will include some cases where the person was not convicted. The alternativeC&JS measure of those given a fine, community or custody sentence does not, of course,cover all possible disposals e.g. conditional discharge. Finally, as the C&JS is based on asample, the results are subject to sampling error. Given these caveats, it is difficult to drawfirm conclusions but it seems likely that a small proportion of respondents forgot or otherwisefailed to report that they had previously been to court.

Table 5.2 Contact with the criminal justice system, by sex and age (all respondents)Percentages Male Female

10-17 18-20 21-45 10-17 18-20 21-45

Ever arrested 7 25 30 3 13 8Ever been to court 2 11 24 1 3 6Ever given fine, community or custodial sentence 1 6 21 <0.5 2 4

Arrested in last year 3 6 3 1 3 1Been to court in last year 1 5 2 <0.5 1 1Given fine, community or custodial sentence in last year 1 3 2 <0.5 1 <0.5

Notes:1. Source: The Crime and Justice Survey, weighted data. 2. Table is restricted to those aged under 46 to allow comparison with figures in Table 5.1.

Offenders‘ contact with the criminal justice system

Lifetime offendersThose who admitted core C&JS offences were, not surprisingly, more likely to have hadcontact with the criminal justice system, though this may not have necessarily been inrelation to the core offence(s). A quarter of those who had offended at some time had beenarrested, and a fifth had been to court charged with an offence. The figures were somewhat


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higher for those who had committed a serious offence (33% had been arrested) or offendedon six or more occasions during their lifetime (35% had been arrested) (Table A5.1).31

Last year offendersFor those who had offended in the last 12 months (one in ten of the sample), six per centhad been arrested by the police in the last year, three per cent had been to court chargedwith an offence, and two per cent had been given a fine, community or custodial sentence.While these figures suggest that only a very small pro p o rtion of active offenders aresanctioned, two caveats apply.

● The most important is that many of the offences measured by the survey will havebeen relatively minor, and would not have been expected to have resulted in aformal sanction. Most of those who steal from school or work, for instance, willnot be caught, and even if they were, the incident might not have been brought topolice attention. The British Crime Survey shows that many victims of crimechoose not to re p o rt to the police because they consider the matter too trivial(Kershaw et al., 2000).

● Delays in the detection and processing of criminal cases will mean someoffenders may be arrested and sanctioned after the survey interview took placefor those offences committed in the reference period. On the other hand, activeo ffenders who also offended before the re f e rence period may well have beensanctioned for those prior offences in the survey period.

P rolific offenders (those who had committed six or more offences) and those who hadcommitted serious offences in the last year were somewhat more likely to say that they hadhad some contact with the criminal justice system (Table A5.1). Eight per cent of pro l i f i coffenders and 11 per cent of serious offenders had been arrested in the last year, comparedwith just four per cent of last year offenders who were neither serious nor prolific. Amongthose who were both serious and prolific 14 per cent had been arrested, seven per cent hadbeen to court, and six per cent convicted in the last year.

Contact for ‘core’ offencesIn addition to estimating general contact with the criminal justice system, it is also possibleto assess the proportion of last year offenders who were proceeded against for the specific

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31. It is not possible to exactly identify those who had committed six or more offences in a lifetime so these figuresare indicative only. Respondents were only asked a banded frequency item for each offence – once, two orthree times or four or more times. To compute number of incidents the lower figure was used i.e. 'two or threetimes' counted as two and 'four or more times' as four.

offences asked about in the survey. Overall, 12 per cent had been spoken to by the policeabout at least one of their offences, although not necessarily arrested.32 Three per cent hadbeen taken to court and one per cent convicted.

Table A5.2 shows figures for specific offence types. For the following offences around a fifthof offenders were spoken to by the police:

● Criminal damage to pro p e rty (20% of those committing this offence were spoken to)● Vehicle-related thefts (18%)● Theft from a shop (17%)● Assault with injury (16%)

Other offences were less likely to result in police contact. Those who committed thefts fromwork or school or sold drugs were least likely to have been spoken to by the police abouttheir offence.

The 1998/1999 YLS also measured whether young people had contact with the criminaljustice system for offences they admitted to. The approach taken was similar to that here,though the offence coverage and question wording differed. Overall, the YLS found that 12per cent of last year offenders aged from 12 to 30 had received a caution or been taken tocourt for an offence. The C&JS estimate for last year offenders aged between 12 and 30 issimilar – 13 per cent were spoken to by the police about a ‘core’ offence.

Offences dealt with by the criminal justice systemThe previous section indicated the extent to which o ff e n d e r s had contact with the police orc o u rts. The C&JS was also designed to enable estimates to be made of the pro p o rtion ofspecific offences committed that resulted in formal sanction. Those who had offended in the lastyear were asked for each incident whether the police contacted them about it, whether thisresulted in a court appearance and whether they were convicted.3 3 In interpreting the results, itis again important to recognise that many offences would have been relatively minor and maynot have warranted an intervention. Delays inherent in bringing offenders to justice will alsomean that the results underestimate the pro p o rtion of offences that were dealt with.


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32. For the offence-specific questions, respondents were asked if the police had spoken to them about the incident(s)rather than whether they had been arrested. Thus this figure is higher than the arrest figure of six per cent.

33. For e v e r y o ffence type admitted to respondents were asked the number of incidents that resulted in policecontact, court and conviction. These questions were not restricted to six offence types only – unlike the detailedquestions on the nature of incidents reported in Chapter 7.

Overall, six per cent of incidents measured by the survey resulted in the offender being spoken toby the police, with one per cent resulting in a court appearance and less than one per cent in ac o n v i c t i o n .3 4 The likelihood of an incident being detected and proceeded against varied acro s so ffences (Table A5.3). For violent incidents 11 per cent resulted in police contact, for pro p e rt yincidents four per cent. Less than 0.5 per cent of drug selling incidents resulted in police contact.

The offence most likely to result in police contact was assault with injury – 19 per cent ofsuch incidents did so. For all other offences the figures were appreciably lower. Whetherincidents result in police contact is influenced by whether or not the police come to knowabout them, and then the information available to identify the perpetrator. Assaults, with thep robable exception of domestic violence, are more likely to be visible than some othero ffences, and victims will at least have some information to help the police identify theperpetrator. Thus, the higher rate of contact is not surprising and is in line with other data.Around four in ten assaults were reported to the police according to the 2002/03 BCS,while the detection rate was 54 per cent (Simmons and Dodd, 2003). This suggests that justover 20 per cent of assaults should have resulted in an offender being charged.

Attrition between the number of offences committed and the number resulting in a convictionis well documented. Using British Crime Survey data on the number of offences as abaseline, it has been estimated that only two per cent of offences in 1997 resulted in aconviction (Barclay and Tavares, 1999).35

Proportion of offences accounted for by known offendersPrevious chapters have discussed how many core offences, as measured by the C&JS, areaccounted for by juveniles and prolific offenders respectively. This chapter now looks at howmuch crime is accounted for by those who have had some form of contact with the criminaljustice system.

Table 5.3 gives results based on diff e rent forms of contact ever and in the last year. It shows thato ffenders known to the police are responsible for a dispro p o rtionate volume of crime. Forexample, the 15 per cent of respondents who had been arrested at some point in their lives wereresponsible for just over a third of offences measured in the last year, while the two per cent ofrespondents arrested in the last year were responsible for 16 per cent of offences. Thus, dealinge ffectively with those already known to the system could have a considerable impact on crime.

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34. These figures are based on the pro p o rtion of incidents. They may be lower or higher than the pro p o rtion of off e n d e r sdealt with for a specific offence type depending on which offenders are dealt with and for how many off e n c e s .

35. This figure is not directly comparable with the C&JS estimate, being based on a different set of offences with noadjustment for co-offending.

Even so, the majority of offences (64%) reported to the survey were committed by those whohad never had contact with the criminal justice system. This is to be expected given thatmany offences measured by the survey will be relatively trivial.

Looking at serious offences only, 29 per cent of incidents were committed by those arrestedin the last year, while 56 per cent were committed by an offender who had never hadcontact with justice agencies.

Table 5.3 Proportion of crime committed by known offendersNo contact Arrested Charged with an offence Convictedwith CJS Ever In last year Ever In last year Ever In last year

% of sample in group 85 15 2 12 1 10 1% of last year offences accounted for by group 64 36 16 23 12 21 12

% serious offences accounted for by group 56 44 29 30 25 29 25

Notes:1. Source: 2003 Crime and Justice Survey, weighted data.


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6 The pattern of offending

This chapter discusses some preliminary findings from the C&JS in relation to the nature ofcriminal careers, in particular when people begin and cease offending, career duration,and reasons for desistence. It also explores the extent to which offenders commit a range ofoffence types or specialise in one or two.

The findings are based on cross-sectional data. This places limits on what can be said abouto ffending careers. Respondents can only look back in time, which introduces a possibleelement of re t rospective bias – error in recalling the time and sequence of events. Alsoyounger respondents may be reporting on a relatively short time, after which offending maybegin or may not continue (see Farrington (2003b) and Loeber and Farrington (1997) forfurther discussion). It is also not possible to identify from the data how individual offendingp a t t e rns change over time. Richer data will emerge with future sweeps of the survey inwhich the longitudinal ‘panel’ element will be better able to track developments in, andinfluences on, offending over time.

In this chapter, a distinction is made for analysis purposes between those who said they hado ffended in the last year, and those who said they had offended only before this. Forsimplicity, the former are called ‘active offenders’, the latter ‘non-active offenders’. Referenceis also made to serious and prolific offenders, who form subgroups of active offenders (seeChapter 4).

Age of onsetThose who had ever committed an offence were asked at what age they had first committedit. We can thus determine age of onset on an individual offence basis, as well as foroffenders as a whole. It should be remembered that respondents may have committed otheroffences or delinquent behaviours not covered in the C&JS, or not included here among the20 core offences with which this report deals. This may have been at an earlier (or later)age. Moreover, because respondents were asked to think about the past, they may havef o rgotten relevant incidents. It should also be recognised that age of onset estimates areinfluenced by the age of those interviewed. For example, a ten-year-old can only have anage of onset up to the age of ten, while a 65-year-old can potentially have an age of onsetup to the age of 65. Thus if only 65-year-olds had been interviewed a later age of onsetwould have been estimated.

Age of onset varied somewhat across offence type. Table A6.1 presents the full results.

● Shoplifting and, not surprisingly, theft from school started early; the mean age offirst offence was 13. Of those who had shoplifted at some time, 21 per cent haddone so before the age of ten.

● D rug selling and damage to a motor vehicle had a relatively late onset – themean age at first offence being 20 and 19. The late mean age of onset forvehicle damage is perhaps surprising. It may be influenced by ‘road rage’ typeincidents between drivers though the C&JS does not collect evidence to test this.

● Theft from the workplace also had a later onset (mean age 22), but this is lessunexpected given occupational patterns.

The relatively high proportion of people who had committed some offences at an early agemight initially seem surprising. For example, nine per cent of those who had committed acommercial burglary at some time had done so before the age of ten; as had ten per cent ofthose who had committed theft from a person. This is likely to reflect the diverse nature ofincidents. Commercial burglaries, for instance, could include trespassing onto vacantp ro p e rties and causing damage; thefts from the person could include taking things fro mfellow school pupils in incidents of bullying.

Among all those who had offended at some point in their lives, the mean age of onset was15. The mean age for males was 15, and a year older for female offenders (16). Just overten per cent of offenders had started offending before the age of ten (the age of criminalresponsibility in England and Wales), though again many of the offences involved may havebeen relatively trivial (Table A6.1). For serious offences, the mean age of onset was 17 (16for males; 18 for females).

Previous research has suggested that earlier onset of problematic or anti-social behaviour isassociated with escalation into more serious and prolific offending (Loeber and Farrington,1997). It is possible to examine this by focusing on active offenders (i.e. those who hadcommitted an offence in the last year). Overall, the mean age of onset among activeoffenders was 14. However, among active offenders classified as serious and prolific, themean age of onset was lower at 11, while among prolific offenders only it was 12.Offenders who had committed a serious offence in the last year but were not prolific had arelatively late mean age of onset at 16 (Table A6.2). Compared with prolific off e n d e r s ,serious non-prolific offenders were more likely to include females and those whose onlyoffence had been assaults resulting in injury.


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Age of desistence and length of offendingThe term desistence is used for offenders who have ceased offending for a given period.Different studies have used different time periods free of offending to define desistence – forexample, one year, two years or five years. Given that offenders may be active and inactiveat different periods and move into different types of offending, it is difficult to determine fromc ross-sectional surveys (or even short - t e rm longitudinal studies) whether respondents havedesisted permanently.

The C&JS indicates that three in ten respondents had committed a core offence at some timebut not in the year preceding the survey. Of these non-active offenders six in ten had beenoffence-free, at least in relation to the core offences, for more than five years.

For non-active offenders (those who had not offended in the last year), the average age atlast offence was 23, though 15 per cent had stopped offending before the age of 14 and af u rther 18 per cent before the age of 18. Among females, the mean age at which theystopped offending was lower (at 21) than for males (23). Looking only at those who had notoffended for five years the mean age at last offence is one year lower (20 for females and22 for males).

Table A6.3 shows the results for individual offences. For example, among those who hadstolen a motor vehicle at some point but not in the last year, the average age of last offencewas 17. The age of desistence was older for drug selling (23), assaults (22), vehicledamage (20), and theft from the workplace (27). The average age offenders desisted fromserious offending was 21.

Restricting analysis to non-active offenders, it is also possible to examine the length ofcriminal careers. This, of course, is only in relation to the offences covered, and is not exactbeing based on age at first and last offence counted in the survey. For example, if the ageof first offence was 14 and age at last offence was 16 the actual length of time between thefirst and last offence could be from just over one year to just under three years. Three out often non-active offenders had definitely offended for less than a year. However, at least aquarter offended over a period of more than nine years – although this is not to say theyoffended throughout. Males had lengthier criminal careers than females (Table 6.1). Almostfour in ten non-active females had definitely offended for less than a year; a quarter formales. Those who had committed a serious offence at some point had longer careers – only19 per cent definitely offended for less than a year, compared with 40 per cent of thosewho had not committed a serious offence.

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The pattern of offending

The results on career length are broadly similar if the focus is on those who had notoffended for five years.

Table 6.1 Length of criminal careers among those who have desisted (non-active offenders)

Males desisters Female desisters All desistersLength of criminal career % % %

Definitely less than 1 year 25 38 30Less than 1 year to less than 2 years 5 5 5More than 1 year, less than 3 years 5 4 5More than 2 years, less than 4 years 3 4 3More than 3 years, less than 5 years 4 4 4More than 4 years, less than 10 years 15 11 13More than 9 years, less than 15 years 11 7 9More than 14 years 17 10 15Unknown 15 17 16

Base n 1,693 1,210 2,903Notes:1. Source: 2003 Crime and Justice Survey, weighted data.2. Desisters are those who have offended at some time but not in the last year3. There is some overlap between the categories because of uncertainty about the exact time between first and

last offence. However, respondents are only assigned to one category.

Reasons for desistenceNon-active offenders were asked why they had not committed an offence again. It should beb o rne in mind that what they said could reflect more their current thinking than reasons at thetime; some respondents may have post-rationalised their reasons for having stopped off e n d i n g .

By far the two most commonly cited reasons were that ‘I knew it was wrong’ and ‘I grew upand/or settled down’. The percentages giving these responses varied by offence type butranged from 53 per cent for selling Class A drugs to 83 per cent for damage to property.For those who said they ‘grew out of crime’, it may simply have been that moral constraintso v e rrode the excitement seeking or peer pre s s u re that previously encouraged them too ffend. Previous re s e a rch has suggested that, particularly for young men, a stablerelationship with a non-offending partner, or moving away from a peer group encouragesdesistence (Farrington, 2001).

Being caught by the police, or fear that this could happen and the likely sentence that wouldresult, was cited by a substantial minority of those who had admitted to: burg l a ry; vehicle-


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related thefts; shoplifting and drug selling (Figure 6.1). The impact of an official sanction ind e t e rring offenders, there f o re, appears to be relatively strong, but certainly not the main factor.

The pattern for drug selling differs somewhat from that for property and violent offences.Only a quarter of former drug sellers said they gave up dealing because ‘I knew it waswrong’, while for other offences between 42 per cent and 59 per cent said this. Conversely,while a third of drug sellers said stopping using drugs was a reason why they gave upselling, this was mentioned by a very small proportion for property and violent offences.Table A6.4 gives the full results.

Figure 6.1 Percentage who said one reason for desisting was experience or fear ofbeing caught

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Specialisation versus diversificationAn important question in criminal career research is to what extent offenders specialise, orengage in many different forms of offending. Do those who commit property offences alsocommit violent offences, for example? There are several ways of looking at this using C&JSresults both on a lifetime and last year basis.

Given that some offence types are similar in nature (e.g. theft of a vehicle and attempted theftof a vehicle), seven broad offence categories were looked at (burg l a ry, vehicle-related theft,other theft, criminal damage, ro b b e ry, assault, and drug selling). A half of lifetime off e n d e r s(active and non-active) had only committed offences within one of the seven off e n c ecategories; a further quarter had offended in two categories. The degree of specialisation is,not surprisingly, higher when looking at the last year: thre e - q u a rters of active offenders hadcommitted offences within only one of the seven categories in the period.

Table 6.2 Number of offence categories committed Percentages Active and non-active offenders Active offendersNumber of offence categories ….in lifetime ….in last year

One 51 76Two 26 13Three 12 4Four 6 1Five 2 1Six or seven 1 <0.5Unknown but at least one 2 5

Base n 4,174 1,263Notes:1. Source: 2003 Crime and Justice Survey, weighted data.

On a lifetime basis, female offenders were less likely to commit offences in more than onecategory than males (37% of female offenders had done so; 53% of males). However, whenfocusing on last year offending there is no difference (17% of female active offenders, 20%of male active offenders). Active offenders aged from 12 to 19 were most diverse on thismeasure, though still around six in ten had only committed offences in one category in thelast year (Table A6.5).36

The degree of specialisation found in the C&JS reflects the fact that the survey identifies aconsiderable proportion of people who have only committed a few minor offences. Those


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36. Age patterns are not explored on a lifetime basis because length of recall period is determined by age.

who have contact with the criminal justice system tend to be more diverse. Restricting theanalysis to lifetime offenders who had received a court sentence demonstrates this. Aroundt w o - t h i rds of these offenders had committed two or more offence categories, with a fifthcommitting offences across four or more categories.

Offending profileLooking at the three broad offence groupings of pro p e rty crime, violent crime and dru gselling, the most common offending patterns on a lifetime basis were:

● property crime only (35% of active and non-active offenders)● property crime and violent crime (32%)● violent crime only (22%).

The profile among male and female offenders differed somewhat, with males being morelikely to offend across groups (Table 6.3). For females the most common pattern wasp ro p e rty crime only; for males it was a mixture of pro p e rty and violent crime, closelyfollowed by property only.

Table 6.3 Offence profile among active and non-active offendersPercentages Male offenders Female offenders All offendersOffence profile in lifetime % % %

Property offences only 32 39 35Violent offences only 20 25 22Drug selling only 1 1 1

Property and violence 35 28 32Violence and drug selling 1 <0.5 <0.5Property and drug selling 3 2 3Violence, property and drug selling 8 4 6

Any property offence 78 74 77Any violence offence 64 58 61Any drug selling offence 11 7 10

Base n 2,507 1,667 4,174Notes:1. Source: 2003 Crime and Justice Survey, weighted data.

Table A6.6 presents the last year offence profile for active offenders. On this basis, activefemale offenders were most likely to commit violent offences only (41%), followed byp ro p e rty offences only (34%). Male active offenders were more evenly split between

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property offences only (38%) and violent offences only (34%). Juvenile offenders were mostdiverse, with 22 per cent committing both pro p e rty and violent offences in the last year.One in ten 18- to 25-year-old active offenders had only sold drugs.

EndnoteA key issue in criminal career research is the extent to which it is possible to differentiatebetween diff e rent career paths and offender types. For example, Moffitt (2003)distinguished between life course persistent offenders and adolescence limited off e n d e r s .While the former have lengthy and often diverse criminal careers, the latter tend to haveshort careers limited to adolescence, with behaviour often influenced by peers. Furthermore,criminal career researchers have argued that the factors that influence the onset of offendingbehaviour are not necessarily the same as those that contribute to persistence (e.g. Blumsteinet al., 1988).

The cross sectional data currently available from the C&JS indicates that many off e n d e r sonly offend during a short period, although a significant group do have lengthy criminalcareers. However, this is based simply on retrospective data relating to age of first and lastoffence. It is not known to what extent offending in this time was sporadic or continuous,how frequent offending was during offending periods, or what offences were committed atdifferent points

F u rther work will be undertaken to examine the diff e rences between offenders and non-offenders, and to identify factors associated with serious and prolific offending. While the2003 C&JS will be able to provide useful findings, the future longitudinal data will providea far richer source of data on criminal careers. In particular, it will enable the examinationof continuity and discontinuity over time in offending patterns and developmental sequencesin problem behaviours.


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7 The nature of offences

As discussed in Chapter 2, the C&JS included an incident form to collect details of offencescommitted in the last year. A maximum of six incident forms could be completed, with apriority selection procedure used if the number of offences exceeded six. If someone hadcommitted a particular offence more than once, they were asked about the most re c e n tincident. This technique is commonly used in survey re s e a rch to reduce the burden onrespondents, and because some may find it difficult to remember earlier incidents. What itmeans, though, is that the details collected are for one incident only, which may or may notbe typical of others.37

The incident form was used to provide an insight into the nature of offences measured by thesurvey, in particular the severity of incidents. It also collected information on co-offendingand offender motivation.

The incident forms (n = 1,960) were comprised of:38

● Burglary – 19 incidents● Vehicle-related thefts – 91 incidents● Other thefts – 631 incidents● Criminal damage – 157 incidents ● Robbery – 9 incidents● Assault – 901 incidents● Drug selling – 152 incidents

The number of incidents of burg l a ry and ro b b e ry are too small to present detailed results, thoughthey are included in overall results for pro p e rty crime and violent crime re s p e c t i v e l y. Drug sellingincidents did not receive the full incident form, but only a question to ascertain to whom therespondent had sold drugs. In 95 per cent of incidents the respondent had sold drugs to a friend.

Where numbers allow, results have been analysed by sex and age. The age grouping usedis from ten to 15, from 16 to 25 and 26 or older – in line with response categories toquestions on the age of victims and co-offenders.

37. Whether or not offenders who have committed more than one offence actually do report on the last incident isunknown. Some may remember a particular incident better than others and report on this, even if it was notstrictly the last one.

38. Incident forms were only asked for offences committed in England and Wales (99% were).

Where and when incidents happenedWhether offenders commit offences in their own locality or travel elsewhere has implicationsfor the interpretation of various data sources and crime reduction policies. Overall, 42 percent of offences were committed in the local area (within 15 minutes of home). Two-thirds ofvehicle-related thefts, just over half of criminal damage offences, and a half of assaults werecommitted locally. Other thefts were less likely to be local – only 28 per cent were (TableA7.1). Research in Sheffield also showed that the vast majority of offender movements arerelatively short – more than half of crime trips being less than two miles. High volume crimewas highly localised, especially domestic burg l a ry and criminal damage offences (Wi l e sand Costello, 2000).

The timing of offences diff e red somewhat by offence type. The majority of assaultshappened in the evening or afternoon. A third of vehicle-related thefts happened in theafternoon, and a further third at night. Other thefts were particularly likely to happen in theafternoon – 46 per cent did (Table A7.1). These results generally accord with the pattern ofvictimisation reported in the BCS.

The age of perpetrators was associated with the timing of incidents. Nearly a half (46%) ofincidents committed by young people aged from ten to 15 happened in the aftern o o n ,compared with a third of incidents by older people. Incidents involving older perpetratorsw e re most likely to happen in the evening or at night – around four in ten did so. Thispattern is even more pronounced for assaults – around two-thirds committed by older peoplehappened in the evening or at night. For most offence types there were no differences inwhen males and females committed incidents. However, assaults committed by males weremost likely to take place in the afternoon (37% did so), while assaults by females were mostlikely to happen during the evening (35%).

Seriousness of the incidentsAs discussed in Chapter 2, self-report offending surveys inevitably pick up some relativelytrivial incidents, even if they are legally offences.

At the beginning of the incident form, respondents were asked to describe what happenedin their own words. This was to assess whether respondents were erroneously re p o rt i n gincidents that were clearly non-criminal. The descriptions suggest that on the whole theincidents were offences, though it was difficult to assess severity in many cases.

T h e re were also several pre-coded questions on the seriousness of incidents. These arediscussed below. The answers are from the offenders’ perspective only. Offenders will


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usually be unable to offer much information about the extent of any injury, or emotionalimpact on the victim, and consequently they were not asked about this.

What type of force was used?The majority of assaults involved the offender grabbing or pushing (58%) or punching orslapping (58%) the victim (Figure 7.1). The victim was kicked in a quarter of assaults; sixper cent involved someone being hit with an object or weapon. Grabbing or pushing wasm o re common in assaults without injury, but punching or slapping was more common ininjury assaults, as was kicking.

Males and females displayed a fairly similar pattern in the type of force they used. The maind i ff e rence for injury assaults was that females were more likely to hit the victim with aweapon or object than male perpetrators. This might be because females use weapons orobjects to compensate for their relative lack of physical strength. For non-injury incidentsfemales were far more likely to say they had punched or slapped the victim than males.Again this latter finding might be influenced by differences between males and females intheir physical strength. If male perpetrators had punched or slapped someone, they would ingeneral be more likely to injure them. If actions other than grabbing and pushing aredefined as excessive force, then females were more likely to have used this than males forall assaults (77% vs 67%). However, this pattern was apparent for those over the age of 16only – in incidents among 10- to 15-year-olds, females and males were equally likely to useexcessive force.

Overall, those aged from ten to 15 and from 16 to 25 used similar levels of force – 72 percent of assaults committed by the former and 76 per cent of assaults committed by the latterinvolved excessive force. The figure is far lower for incidents by older people – 56 per cent.

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The nature of offences

Figure 7.1 Type of force used in assaults

The value of damageThose who had committed criminal damage were asked to estimate the cost of the damagethey did.3 9 About a sixth of incidents (16%) involved damage valued by the offender atunder £5. About six in ten incidents were estimated at £100 or less. Damage was estimatedat over £500 in 14 per cent of offences (Table A7.2).

There are incident forms for only 157 criminal damage offences (66 of these were againstvehicles). It is difficult therefore to explore how the severity of incidents differed by age andsex. The data indicate that young people under the age of 15 are more likely to commitboth the most trivial and most serious incidents.4 0 H o w e v e r, these diff e rences are notstatistically significant due to the small sample size and even if they were it might be thatyoung people are less able to put a ‘realistic’ value on the damage caused.

The value of stolen propertyOnly a small proportion of theft incidents involved stealing money (5%), credit cards (1%) ord rugs (<1%). The majority of incidents involved theft of other types of pro p e rty (Ta b l e


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39. Respondents were asked to select from pre-coded categories.40. Among 10- to 15-year-olds, 42 per cent of incidents were valued at £20 or under, while 19 per cent were

valued in excess of £500. The respective figures for incidents committed by older people were 27 per cent andnine per cent.

A 7 . 3 ) .4 1 Those who had stolen other pro p e rty were asked to estimate the cost of re p l a c e m e n t .4 2

Overall, 62 per cent of incidents involved pro p e rty valued at under £5, and 91 per cent at£100 or less. There was more significant loss of over £500 in only two per cent of incidents.A c ross pro p e rty thefts as a whole losses were lower than for criminal damage.

Losses varied across offence types. Shoplifting incidents resulted in the greatest loss (14%resulted in losses of over £500 – similar to the figure for criminal damage). The vastmajority of thefts from school or the workplace were of low value.

There were no clear patterns by age and sex in the value of property stolen.

Victims

Victim offender relationshipO ffenders were asked how well they knew the victim(s) prior to the incident. In thre e -q u a r ters of incidents (excluding those that were directed against a business ororganisation43) the offender already knew the victims in some way (just over half involvingvictims who the offender knew well). There was a clear difference between offences, withassaults and ‘other thefts’ being more likely to be against victims known to the off e n d e r(Table A7.4). Only 20 per cent of violent incidents were against strangers.

Assaults committed by females and young people were more likely to involve a victimknown well. Females knew the victim well in 77 per cent of incidents, with the equivalentfigure for males being 49 per cent. Likewise 71 per cent of assaults committed by ten- to 15-y e a r-olds were against people known well, compared with around a half of assaultscommitted by older people.

Those who had committed an assault against someone they knew were asked what theirrelationship was to the victim. Most incidents were against friends (38%), partners (11%) orother relatives (26%) (Table A7.5). Males were most likely to have assaulted a friend (46%of incidents) followed by other relatives (19%), whereas females were most likely to haveassaulted a relative (38%), partner (27%) or friend (27%). Assaults committed by ten- to 15-year-olds were most likely to be against their siblings (36%) or friends (49%), while 36 percent of assaults by people of 25 and over were against partners.

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41. Information was not collected on exactly what was stolen. The 2004 C&S asks for details of what was stolen.42. Respondents were asked to select from pre-coded categories.43. Those who had committed a workplace, school, shop or other theft were first asked if the pro p e rty stolen

belonged to an individual or the organisation/business. They were not asked how well they knew the victim ifthey said the property belonged to an organisation or business. Commercial burglary and commercial robberywere also excluded.

Victim characteristicsDetails of the victims’ age and sex were only asked for incidents of assault.

The majority of assaults (78%) were against males only; 14 per cent were against femaleso n l y, while seven per cent involved both males and females (Table A7.5). Of incidentscommitted by males, 92 per cent involved a male victim. The high level of male-on-maleassault applied across age groups. Female-on-female assault was less common – 40 percent of the assaults committed by females involved a female victim; 51 per cent involved amale victim. Assaults committed by girls aged from ten to 15 were more likely to be againstanother female (57% were), than assaults by older females (25%).

In terms of age, three-quarters of incidents were against victims aged between ten and 25.They were aged from ten to 15 in 37 per cent of incidents, and 16 to 25 in 38 per cent. (Ifthere was more than one victim, only the youngest was asked about.) Only one per cent ofvictims were over 45.

Victims tended to be of a similar age to the offender. In three-quarters of incidents by ten- to15- year-olds and 16- to 25-year-olds the victim was in the same age group. Just over a halfof incidents committed by those over the age of 25 were against people aged 25 and over.

Co-offendingThe extent of co-offending is an important research question – for one because if only onemember of an offending group is caught this may have little impact on crime figures if co-offenders continue to offend.

Almost a quarter (24%) of offences involved one or more co-offender, though this differeda c ross offence types. The majority of vehicle-related thefts (62%) and a considerablep ro p o rtion of criminal damage incidents (44%) were committed with others. A third ofv e h i c l e - related thefts involved three or more co-offenders, as did 28 per cent of criminaldamage incidents. Violent offences and other thefts were far less likely to involve co-offenders; around a fifth did so (Table A7.6).

Respondents who had offended with others were asked about their co-offenders. In two-thirds of incidents, the co-offenders were male. Just under a fifth of incidents involved mixedsex co-offenders and 15 per cent female only co-offenders. Male offenders tended to offendwith other males (in 81% of incidents the co-offenders were male only; in 17% both maleand female and in 2% female only). Female offenders, on the other hand, offended with


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other females in 48 per cent of cases, with males in 30 per cent of cases and with bothmales and females in 22 per cent of cases.

The majority of co-offenders were aged from ten to 15 (39%) or from 16 to 25 (41%). Ve ry feww e re under the age of ten (3%) or over 45 (2%). Co-offenders tended to be within the same ageg roup as the respondent. This was the case in 83 per cent of co-offending incidents committedby ten- to 15-year-olds, and 75 per cent of incidents committed by 16- to 25-year- o l d s .

The majority of co-offenders were friends (71%), though 18 per cent involved a partner orrelative, and 17 per cent a work colleague. Very few co-offenders were strangers. Therewere some differences between property and violent offences, with the former more likely toinvolve friends and partners, the latter other relatives and work colleagues.

Motivation for offending Respondents were asked whether or not they had planned the offence and why they felt theyhad committed it (Tables A7.8 and A7.10). The utility of asking offenders about theirmotivations has been subject to some debate (Farrington, 1993). It has been argued thatpeople find it difficult, if not impossible, to understand their complex mental processes andwill have little insight into their motives. Offenders may also use the opportunity to minimisetheir culpability (e.g. I was drunk). It is also likely that people are more aware of theimmediate situational motives than longer-term factors that contribute to their offending.

The majority of offences (78%) happened on the ‘spur of the moment’. This was particularlyso for assaults. Other thefts were the most likely to be planned (28%). The results are similarfor males and females and across age groups.

The reasons given for offending differed considerably across the offence groups.

● For vehicle-related thefts, the most common reasons were because the off e n d e rwas ‘bored or had nothing else to do’ (32%) or ‘for the fun or the buzz’ (33%).Being drunk was cited in 16 per cent of cases.

● For other thefts, the most common reason was because the offender ‘wanted themoney or what was stolen’ (34%) – in line with the more planned nature of theseincidents.

● Assaults were mainly driven by being annoyed or upset with someone. Over ahalf (54%) gave this as a reason, although almost a third (31%) said self-defencewas a factor.

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● A range of reasons were given for committing criminal damage, includingb o redom (23%); the buzz (18%); being annoyed by someone (22%); re v e n g e(22%); and being drunk (26%).

Motivations were generally similar for males and females, though males were more likely tocite self-defence for incidents of assault (34% versus 24% for females), while females weremore likely to cite being annoyed (70% versus 45% for males).

The role of drugs and alcoholOffenders were asked if they had taken alcohol or drugs at the time of the offence. Thisdoes not, of course, necessarily imply this caused the offending. The question on why theyo ffended, discussed above, addressed this more directly – being under the influence ofalcohol and drugs were possible responses.

AlcoholAlcohol is now recognised as an important spur to offending, in particular thro u g himpairing judgement. The C&JS showed that, overall ten per cent of incidents werecommitted when the offender had taken alcohol but not drugs; and two per cent when theoffender had taken both drugs and alcohol. This differed across offences (Table A7.9). Itwas most common in relation to criminal damage (40% of incidents were committed whenthe offender had been drinking, or drinking and taking drugs) and vehicle-related thefts(31%). The contribution of alcohol was, perhaps surprisingly, lower than this for assaults: inonly 17 per cent of incidents of assault did the offender say he/she had been drinking (ordrinking and taking drugs). This in part reflects the nature of assaults committed by children.A far higher proportion of assaults committed by young adults involved alcohol. Just over athird (37%) of assaults committed by males aged from 16 to 25 had happened when theoffender had been drinking; 28 per cent of incidents by females aged from 16 to 25.

Across offences as a whole, six per cent of offenders said what happened was at least inp a rt a result of them being drunk (Table A7.10.) In line with results above, a higherp ro p o rtion of criminal damage incidents (26%) and vehicle-related thefts (16%) weredirectly attributed to being drunk than violent incidents (7%). The role of alcohol in violencewas again highest among 16- to 25- year-olds – at 14 per cent.

The 2001/02 British Crime Survey estimated that offenders were ‘under the influence ofalcohol’ in around a half of assaults (Flood-Page and Ta y l o r, 2003). The BCS is, of course,based on victim perceptions. It seems likely that victims will attribute incidents to alcohol if there


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is any evidence alcohol has been consumed, re g a rdless of whether it influenced the off e n d e ror not (which victims are unlikely to know with any certainty). The C&JS measure of theo ffender having consumed alcohol is there f o re the better measure to compare with the BCS.That this figure (17% of assaults committed by an offender who had been drinking) is still farlower than the BCS estimate in part reflects the inclusion of incidents against children in theC&JS. Restricting the C&JS to assaults committed against adults gives a figure of 30 per cent ofincidents involving alcohol. This is closer to the BCS figure but still some way off. Theremaining diff e rence may reflect a diff e rence in the profile of assaults picked up by the surv e y sand some degree of over- re p o rting by victims. Victims may make erroneous judgements basedon the off e n d e r ’s demeanour or the location of the incident (see Budd, 2003)

DrugsD rug use is now also recognised as a fuel to offending, particularly in stealing to fund a dru ghabit. Overall, three per cent of incidents were committed when the offender had taken dru g s ,and two per cent when both alcohol and drugs had been taken. Again, this varied acro s so ffence groups (Table A7.9). Offenders had most often used drugs (sometimes with alcohol) atthe time of vehicle-related thefts (11%) – echoing the pattern for alcohol alone. Having takend rugs (or drugs and alcohol) was generally more evident in pro p e rty crimes than in violence.

For offences as a whole, two per cent of offenders said that being under the influence ofdrugs contributed to the offence (rather less than for alcohol at 6%). The influence of drugswas higher for shoplifting than other offences, at eight per cent. The figure was alsorelatively high (5%) for vehicle-related thefts.

There is another C&JS question that bears on the role of drugs in offending, located in theseries of questions about drug use. Those who said they were current drug users were askedwhether in the last year they had committed a crime to buy drugs. Only one per cent of alldrug users said they had committed a crime to buy drugs (this equates to 0.2% of the wholesample). Looking at all last year offenders again just one per cent had committed a crime tobuy drugs (65% had not used drugs at all in the period; 34% had used drugs but notcommitted a crime to buy drugs). On the basis of drug users who said they had committed acore theft offence in the last year the figure rises to just four per cent.

These findings suggest that drugs are a factor in offending for only a very small group ofo ffenders covered by the surv e y. This is not surprising given the population and off e n c ecoverage of the C&JS. It reflects the type of offenders (often minor) and drug users (oftenrecreational) picked up by the survey. Serious offenders and problematic drug users are lesslikely to live in private households (for example, being in prison or homeless) and even if

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they do may be less likely to participate in the survey. Surveys focusing on offenders moreentrenched in the criminal justice system show a different picture. For example, a survey ofmale prisoners found that of those who had used drugs in the year prior to custody, over ahalf said that they had committed offences related to their drug taking in some way(Ramsay, 2003). This was usually to fund their drug habit, with 45 per cent of drug usingmale prisoners having committed an offence to get money for drugs. (This equates to 32%of all prisoners interviewed).

Patterns of drug use and links with offending will be examined in more depth in subsequentreports.

The importance of sanctionsOffenders were asked about their views on the likelihood of being caught by the police orsomeone else at the time of the incident and how concerned they were about theconsequences (Table A7.11).

In the majority of incidents, perpetrators felt it was either very unlikely (58%) or fairlyunlikely (15%) they would get caught. However, in about a fifth of incidents they felt that thiswas likely to happen. This suggests that the offenders identified in the survey overestimatetheir chance of being caught given that only six per cent of last year incidents actuallyresulted in police contact (see Chapter 5).

For most incidents the offender was not worried about the consequences of being caught. Inonly 14 per cent of incidents was the respondent worried. There were some diff e re n c e sacross offence type. For instance, a higher proportion of those involved in vehicle-relatedthefts thought they were likely to get caught and were concerned about the consequences. Asimilar proportion of those who committed an assault resulting in injury thought they wouldbe caught, but they were less concerned about the consequences.

Males were generally more likely to think they might get caught than females, especially forassaults - 18 per cent of males thought it ‘very likely’ they would get caught for an assaultcompared with six per cent of females. Those aged from ten to 15 were also more likely tosay they thought they would get caught at the time of the incident – 26 per cent of themre p o rting that it was ‘very’ or ‘fairly’ likely. Concern about the consequences of beingcaught was similar across males and females and across age groups.

There was little difference in perceptions of being caught and the consequences for plannedincidents and those committed on the spur of the moment, although perpetrators were more


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likely to be ‘very worried’ about the consequences of being caught in ‘planned’ incidents(10% compared to 5% in the unplanned group).

The question arises as to why people who think it likely they will be caught commit theoffence at all. Looking at motivations for offending, a higher proportion of those thinkingthey were likely to get caught said they offended because of revenge, were annoyed bysomeone, or were acting in self-defence. These spurs to offending, then, seem to serve tooverride concern about being caught. There might also be a degree of post-rationalisationsince those who were actually caught by the police were most likely to say they wereconcerned about this at the time of the incident. (In 69% of incidents the police came toknow about, the perpetrator had thought this likely at the time).

Views on re-offendingRespondents were asked if they thought they would commit the offence again. In a quarterof incidents (26%) offenders said they would not, in a half (52%) they said they would, andin about a fifth they did not know. Overall, males were more likely to say they wouldreoffend (55% of incidents) than females (46%). Older perpetrators were more likely to seethemselves as re-offending (65% of incidents by those aged over 25) than younger offenders(51% of incidents by 10- to 15-year-olds). Figure 7.2 below shows the results by offencegroup. Those committing assaults were most likely to say they would commit one again.

Figure 7.2 Views on likelihood of reoffending

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As one would expect, those most concerned about the consequences of being caught at thetime of the incident were less likely to say they would commit the offence again (31% ofincidents compared with 61% where the offender was unconcerned about consequences).Interestingly, those who had committed incidents that actually resulted in police contact wereas likely to say they would commit the offence again (50%), as those who had no contact(53%). It is difficult to unpick this given the small number of incidents that resulted in policecontact. However, assaults formed a higher proportion of contact incidents than non-contactincidents, and as seen above, those who commit assaults tend to be more likely to say theymay commit an assault again.


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8 Conclusions

The 2003 C&JS is an important survey of around 12,000 people in England and Wales. Itoffers new information about offending in the general population, covering a much widerage range (from ten to 65 years) than has been surveyed to date. Both its high responserate and ‘cutting edge’ methodology enhance the reliability of results. This chapter assesseshow the C&JS adds to our knowledge and provides an overview of some key findings.

Do we know the level of offending? The question of how many people offend depends critically on the definition of ‘offending’.The C&JS did not attempt to cover all forms of offending; and indeed it is questionablewhether any survey could realistically do so. The C&JS omits, for example, sexual offences.‘ M a rginal’ offences, such as under-age drinking and fare evasion, were covered in thes u rv e y, as were handling stolen goods, various forms of fraud, and technology off e n c e s(e.g. sending viruses, illegally downloading software). These have been omitted in thisreport, which focuses instead on a set of 20 'core' offences for which the fullest informationwas collected.

The 20 core offences pertain to behaviours that people would have recognised as againstthe law, even if they might view some of them as ‘the sort of things lots of people do’.Certainly, as has been emphasised, some individual incidents were relatively trivial in nature(e.g. assaults without injury, and thefts and damage incidents of small monetary import ) .This is an inevitable consequence of self-report techniques that essentially try to elicit moreserious offending through questions that will also uncover incidents at the less serious end ofthe spectrum.

There are reasons why it was important to collect information about low-level offending. Forone, such offences can add up to a significant problem at the aggregate level. It is alsoimportant as a means of differentiating the serious or prolific offender from the occasionaltransgressor. The inclusion of trivial incidents will certainly inflate the estimated number ofoffenders and offences measured, but in this respect the C&JS is no different from other self-report surveys that now have substantial currency. (For instance, the MORI Youth Survey of11- to 16-year-olds is used by the Youth Justice Board to monitor levels of youth crime.).

The C&JS shows that about four in ten people had committed at least one core offence atsome time, with one in ten doing so in the last year. The majority of those who had offended

tended to have only done so occasionally. It suggests, then, that most citizens are generallylaw-abiding. If the focus is on serious or prolific offenders, then the number of off e n d e r shalves with five per cent of all ten- to 65-year-olds, or an estimated 1.8 million people,falling into this group.

The concentration of offendingThe C&JS provides further evidence that a small fraction of the population accounts for asubstantial proportion of all offences. Here, just under a tenth of last year offenders (1% ofthe sample) accounted for 62 per cent of all offences. This concentration of offending isbroadly in line with other work, although estimates vary according to data source, and whato ff e n d e r s : o ffences ratio is taken. In the 1953 male Offenders Index (OI) cohort, forinstance, 25 per cent of offenders (8% of the population) accounted for over 60 per cent ofconvictions. In the cohort in the Cambridge Study of Delinquent Development, six per cent ofmales accounted for about 50 per cent of all convictions up to the age of 40 (Farringtonand West, 1993). The Youth Lifestyle Survey suggested that about ten per cent of offenderswere responsible for about 50 per cent of offences (Flood-Page et al., 2000), though this islikely to underestimate concentration somewhat due to the method used. On the basis ofanalysis of the Offenders Index, it has been estimated that ten per cent of active offendersaccount for 50 per cent of convictions (Criminal Justice: The Way Ahead, 2001).

The implications of the strong concentration of offending among a key group of prolific andpersistent offenders is now reflected in many strands of activity on the part of the police, andcentral and local government. Essentially, this activity focuses on identifying and targetinghigh rate offenders, on supporting the criminal justice system in catching and bringing themto justice, and on offering effective rehabilitative programmes. Additionally, there is now fullrecognition of the need to focus early intervention work on those young people most likely tobecome prolific offenders.

Crime and Justice Survey estimates in comparison with other sourcesT h e re will be interest in how the C&JS results compare with other sources of inform a t i o nabout the volume of offences and offending levels, although there are inevitably difficultiesin comparing results from different sources.

The number of offencesThe C&JS measures individual instances of offending rather than crime events. It does nottake into account co-offending – a crime event could involve more than one offender.


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Aligning the C&JS with British Crime Survey to compare estimates of crime events is there f o red i fficult. However, restricting the analysis to a comparable subset of offences and adjustingfor co-offending suggests the C&JS gives a similar count of violent crime but a lower count ofcomparable pro p e rty crime. The lower pro p e rty crime count indicates some degree of under-re p o rting by offenders, but is perhaps more due to the population coverage of the C&JS. Thehighest rate offenders, who contribute most to crime, are under- re p resented in the surv e y(being excluded if they are in custody and perhaps less likely to participate if they are in thecommunity). That there are diff e rences between diff e rent data sources is inevitable. What isi m p o rtant is understanding these diff e rences and utilising the most appropriate data for ap a rticular purpose.

The extent of youth offendingIn terms of self-reported offending levels, the two main sources of comparison are the YouthJustice Board survey of 11- to 16-year-olds, and the 1998/99 Youth Lifestyle Survey (YLS).There are some difficulties here due to differences in sample design, questionnaire design,offence coverage, and mode of administration. The Youth Justice Board survey, for example,is a school-based, paper and pencil survey and has a single offence screener that is thenfollowed up to identify offence types committed. The 1998/1999 YLS has more similaritieswith the C&JS but did not use Audio-CASI and the wording of the offence screeners differed.

Despite these differences, C&JS results on last year prevalence of any offence for 11- to 16-year- olds is 25 per cent, close to the Youth Justice Board survey estimate of 26 per cent forpupils in mainstream schools. C&JS results are also in line with those from the YLS if basedon the same age range of 12- to 30-year-olds (19% in both).

Despite the diff e rences between the YLS and C&JS these results might be suggestive of stabilityin youth offending over time. Thus, although the offence screeners diff e red in the surveys, itmight be that they nonetheless covered similar offences in terms of severity. The stability ofo ffending levels in the surveys might point, then, to a picture of little change in offending byyoung people. Less optimistically, changes in offending and the diff e rences in methodology mayhave cancelled each other out. It is impossible to know for sure, but the evidence from the YJBYouth Survey suggests reasonable stability in youth offending since 1999 (Youth Surv e y, 2003).

The C&JS will in due course provide robust evidence on trends in offending by juveniles andyoung adults.

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Conclusions

Who offends?In line with previous self-re p o rt offending surveys and criminal justice statistics the C&JSshows that males are more likely to offend than females. This applies across the age rangeand the offences considered, with males responsible for around three-quarters of offencesreported.

Female offending was dominated by assaults, particularly those that did not result in injury.However, males were still almost twice as likely as females to have committed an assault inthe last year, and a higher proportion of male assaults involved injury. Female assaults wereparticularly likely to be of a domestic nature – against partners or other relatives.

While administrative statistics show that juveniles and young adults are more oftenconvicted than older people, before the C&JS there has been no national self-report surveyto confirm whether this also holds for offending. In looking across ages ten to 65, the C&JSconfirms the dominance of offending by juveniles and young adults. Thus, ten- to 25-year-olds (27% of the sample) accounted for two-thirds of offences measured by the survey. Thisis even more apparent if the focus is only on serious offences – with ten- to 25-year-oldsbeing responsible for 80 per cent of offences. Even so, offending among older peopleshould not be discounted.

Why do people offend?S u rveys of known offenders (e.g., prisoners or arrestees) suggest that drugs play ani m p o rtant role in offending behaviour, with offending rates particularly high among harddrug users. The C&JS shows that this is far less the case when the focus is on offenders inthe general population and the offence coverage wider. Very few offenders had taken drugsat the time of their offences, and even less said drugs were a factor in their off e n d i n gb e h a v i o u r. In only two per cent of incidents did the offender say that being under theinfluence of drugs contributed to the offence. This was highest for shoplifting at eight percent. Furthermore, among all drug users, only one per cent had committed a crime in orderto buy drugs in the last year. The role of alcohol was more prominent, with six per cent ofincidents being attributed to alcohol. Interestingly, the role of alcohol was more apparent forcriminal damage and vehicle-related thefts than for assaults.

The C&JS shows that for the general population, offending is often spontaneous and moreoften relates to ‘being bored’ or ‘wanting fun’. Many of those who had stopped offendingsimply attributed this to growing up.


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The Justice GapThe C&JS provides evidence on the extent of the gap between actual offences committedand those brought to justice. Previous analysis based on various sources of data estimatedthat only two per cent of offences resulted in a conviction (Barclay and Tavares, 1999). TheC&JS confirms that only a very small pro p o rtion of all offences committed result in aconviction – less than one per cent, though this will be an underestimate due to time delaysin processing cases. A higher proportion lead to police contact at six per cent.

However, given that a key part of attrition is that victims choose not to report minor incidentsto the police in the first place, what the C&JS adds is what it says about the contact seriousor prolific offenders have with the criminal justice system. It shows a substantial minority,about a third, of the most serious or prolific offenders do come into contact with the criminaljustice system at some point. Clearly, this means they are identifiable to the authorities andthus appropriate interventions can be taken.

The story so far and the futureTo conclude, the 2003 C&JS shows that while offending at some time is relatively common,only a small pro p o rtion are active offenders and these are primarily young people,p a rticularly young males. Furt h e rm o re only a minority of these active offenders off e n dfrequently or commit serious offences. Those who do so are the group of key interest to thecriminal justice system. Focusing policy eff o rts on prolific young offenders could bringsubstantial dividends in crime reduction if initiatives are successful in addressing theoffending of this key group. The survey suggests there is cause for some optimism in that thecriminal justice system does at some point have contact with a substantial minority of seriousor prolific offenders – they are therefore identifiable. Being able to identify them early to putin place preventative measures will be important.

The C&JS collected considerable information on the background and behaviours ofrespondents to add to knowledge about the risk factors most closely associated witho ffending, and in particular serious and prolific offending. This re p o rt has not covere dthese, but work is ongoing. The continuation of the C&JS to collect important longitudinalinformation will provide further evidence on risk factors and the development of delinquentb e h a v i o u r. The findings will help inform the development and focus of appro p r i a t epreventative and rehabilitative strategies.

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Conclusions


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Appendix A Additional tables

Table notesThe following conventions apply:All %s and means presented are based on appropriately weighted data.<0.5 indicates a figure less than 0.5%.'-' indicates no respondents in the given category.The base n is the number of respondents (unweighted) upon which figures are based. Results are not presented if the base n isless than 50. Where the base n is less than 100 the results should be treated with caution as the estimates are subject to largefluctuations.

Table A3.1 Lifetime and 12 month prevalence of offending, by sexPer cent committing… ...in lifetime …in last 12 months

Males Females All Males Females All

Any property offence 39.8 22.2* 30.9 7.5 3.5* 5.5Burglary 3.8 0.9* 2.4 0.2 0.1 0.1Domestic burglary 1.1 0.2* 0.6 - - -Commercial burglary 3.5 0.8* 2.1 0.2 0.1 0.1

Ve h i c l e - related thefts (including attempts) 10.8 1.6* 6.1 0.8 0.1* 0.5Theft of a motor vehicle 4.7 0.7* 2.7 0.3 0.1 0.2Attempted theft of a motor vehicle 1.6 0.2* 0.9 0.1 - 0.1Theft from a vehicle (outside) 5.8 0.6* 3.2 0.4 - 0.2Theft from a vehicle (inside) 2.0 0.2* 1.1 0.2 - 0.1Attempted theft from a vehicle 1.8 0.2* 1.0 0.1 - 0.1

Other thefts 35.1 20.8* 27.9 6.3 3.0* 4.7Theft from person 0.8 0.4* 0.6 0.2 - * 0.1Theft from work 20.3 9.1* 14.6 4.3 1.7* 3.0Theft from school 12.4 7.4* 9.9 1.5 0.8* 1.1Theft from shop 16.8 10.2* 13.5 0.7 0.7* 0.7Other theft 8.3 3.7* 6.0 0.7 0.3* 0.5

Criminal damage 14.3 3.9* 9.0 1.5 0.6* 1.0Damage to a motor vehicle 6.2 1.9* 4.0 0.7 0.3* 0.5Other damage 11.4 2.4* 6.9 1.0 0.4* 0.7

Any violent offence 32.4 17.2* 24.8 7.0 3.9* 5.4

Robbery 0.4 0.2 0.3 0.1 - -Personal robbery 0.3 0.1 0.2 0.1 - -Commercial robbery 0.2 0.1 0.1 - - -

Assault 32.3 17.1* 24.7 7.0 3.9* 5.4Assault with injury 23.9 11.8* 17.8 4.4 2.6* 3.5Assault – no injury 21.0 11.0* 16.0 4.3 2.4* 3.3

Any drug offence 5.7 2.1* 3.9 1.5 0.6* 1.1Sold Class A drugs 2.1 0.7* 1.4 0.6 0.2* 0.4Sold other drugs 5.5 2.0* 3.7 1.5 0.6* 1.0

Any offence 51.5 30.2* 40.8 13.2 6.9* 10.0Base n 4,763 5,125 9,888 4,676 5,050 9,726Notes:1. Source: 2003 Crime and Justice Survey, weighted data. Based on all respondents.2. Base n given is for any offence. This differs for the various offences depending on the number of respondents

who said ‘don't know’ or refused to answer. 3. * indicates that females were significantly less likely to have committed (at 5% level).


74

Table A3.2 Prevalence of offending in lifetime, by age% committing in lifetime

Any offence Property offence Violent offence Drug selling

Age10 to 11 27 16 18 112 to 13 38 25 29 <0.514 to 15 57 39 43 316 to 17 61 47 42 618 to 19 59 47 39 1120 to 25 51 39 32 1026 to 29 51 39 33 930 to 35 45 36 27 536 to 39 42 34 24 540 to 45 44 32 26 246 to 49 37 27 19 150 to 55 29 21 15 156 to 59 27 23 13 <0.560 to 65 23 15 11 <0.5All 41 31 25 4Notes:1. Source: 2003 Crime and Justice Survey, weighted data. Based on all respondents.

75

Appendix A

Table A3.3 Frequency of offending in lifetime, by offence typePercentages Number of times committed in lifetime

Once Two or three times More often Base n

Property offencesDomestic burglary 42 27 17 62Commercial burglary 48 25 19 224Theft of a motor vehicle 58 19 12 262Attempted theft of a motor vehicle 55 22 7 107Theft from a vehicle (outside) 58 28 9 343Theft from a vehicle (inside) 51 16 22 122Attempted theft from a vehicle 54 21 10 111Theft from person 50 35 5 88Theft from work 22 42 25 1,254Theft from school 39 37 14 1,173Theft from shop 38 37 19 1,355Other theft 41 30 15 660Damage to a motor vehicle 64 23 6 459Other damage 47 31 10 765

Violent offences2

Assault with injury 38 36 15 1,904Assault - no injury 32 36 18 1,715

Drug dealing offencesSold Class A drugs 12 35 37 139Sold other drugs 18 33 38 413Notes:1. Source: 2003 Crime and Justice Survey, weighted data. Based on lifetime offenders.2. Includes robbery. Results are not presented separately for robbery because base numbers are below 50.


76

Table A3.4 Last year prevalence of offending, by age and sexPer cent committing Burglary Vehicle- Other Criminal Any Robbery Assault Any Any Base

related thefts damage property violent drug nthefts offence offence offence

Males <0.5 1 6 1 7 <0.5 7 7 2 4,67610 to 11 - 2 6 2 9 - 14 14 - 31312 to 13 1 3 12 5 15 <0.5 18 18 <0.5 37514 to 15 1 3 14 7 17 <0.5 33 33 2 32816 to 17 2 6 17 9 25 1 30 30 6 31818 to 19 1 3 13 4 16 - 18 18 8 27620 to 25 1 1 9 2 10 - 9 9 5 60226 to 35 - <0.5 8 1 8 - 5 5 1 59536 to 45 <0.5 - 5 <0.5 5 - 3 3 1 67246 to 65 - <0.5 2 - 3 - 1 1 - 1,197

Males 10-17 1 3 12 6 16 <0.5 24 24 2 1,334Females <0.5 <0.5 3 1 4 - 4 4 1 5,05010 to 11 - <0.5 3 - 3 - 5 5 - 27112 to 13 - 1 7 2 9 - 15 15 <0.5 33814 to 15 1 1 11 3 13 <0.5 18 18 2 29916 to 17 <0.5 <0.5 9 2 10 - 15 15 2 32718 to 19 - 1 8 <0.5 9 - 11 11 5 20420 to 25 - <0.5 5 1 6 - 5 6 1 72326 to 35 <0.5 - 3 1 3 - 2 2 1 74236 to 45 <0.5 - 1 <0.5 2 - 2 2 <0.5 70046 to 65 - - 1 <0.5 1 - 1 1 <0.5 1,446

Females 10-17 <0.5 1 8 2 9 <0.5 13 13 1 1,235Notes:1. Source: 2003 Crime and Justice Survey, weighted data. Based on all respondents.

77

Appendix A

Table A3.5 Last year prevalence of offending, by age Per cent committing…. 10 to11 12 to13 14 to15 16 to 17 18 to 19 20 to 25 26 to 35 36 to 45 46 to 65

Any property offence 6.2 11.9 15.0 17.6 12.6 8.0 5.7 3.5 2.0Burglary - 0.3 0.8 0.9 0.3 0.3 - 0.1 -Domestic burglary - - - - - - - - -Commercial burglary - 0.3 0.8 0.9 0.3 0.3 - 0.1 -

Vehicle-related thefts 1.0 1.9 2.2 3.1 2.9 1.3 0.6 0.2 0.2Theft of a motor vehicle 0.3 0.2 1.1 1.5 1.3 0.5 - - -Attempted theft of a motor vehicle - 0.2 0.4 0.8 0.5 0.2 - - -Theft from a vehicle (outside) 0.5 1.3 1.2 0.7 0.4 - 0.1 - 0.1Theft from a vehicle (inside) 0.2 0.1 0.7 0.4 0.7 0.2 - - -Attempted theft from a vehicle 0.1 0.6 0.5 0.3 - 0.1 - - -

Other thefts 4.7 9.6 12.5 13.2 10.5 7.0 5.0 3.2 1.8Theft from person - 0.9 1.2 0.5 - 0.2 - - -Theft from work - 0.3 0.4 4.1 7.6 6.3 4.4 2.8 1.6Theft from school 3.3 6.9 8.9 8.8 2.3 0.2 - 0.1 -Theft from shop 1.1 3.7 4.9 1.7 1.4 0.8 0.5 0.2 0.2Other theft 1.0 2.0 3.1 1.6 0.8 0.7 0.2 0.3 -

Criminal damage 0.8 3.4 4.9 5.7 2.2 1.4 0.9 0.3 0.1Damage to a motor vehicle 0.2 1.0 2.5 1.4 1.0 0.9 0.5 0.2 0.1Other damage 0.6 2.8 3.9 4.8 1.8 0.7 0.5 0.1 -

Any violent offence 9.5 16.9 25.4 22.6 14.7 7.0 3.8 2.5 1.2Robbery - 0.1 0.3 0.6 - - - - -Personal robbery - 0.1 0.3 0.6 - - - - -Commercial robbery - - 0.1 - - - - - -

Assault 9.5 16.8 25.4 22.5 14.7 7.0 3.8 2.5 1.2Assault with injury 6.0 10.1 15.9 16.6 10.8 4.6 2.4 1.7 0.5Assault - no injury 5.5 10.6 17.0 12.1 7.5 4.1 2.6 1.4 0.8

Any drug offence - 0.3 2.0 4.0 6.2 3.1 1.1 0.5 0.1Sold Class A drugs - - 0.4 0.5 1.6 1.4 0.6 0.2 -Sold other drugs - 0.3 2.0 3.8 6.0 2.9 1.1 0.4 0.1

Any offence 14.3 23.1 32.4 31.9 24.3 15.4 9.3 6.1 3.1Any offence excluding work and school place thefts 12.6 21.0 30.1 27.4 19.7 10.9 5.6 3.4 1.6

Base n 584 713 627 645 480 1,325 1,337 1,372 2,643Notes:1. Source: 2003 Crime and Justice Survey, weighted data. Based on all respondents


78

Table A3.6 Estimates of number of offenders in England and Wales (millions)Numbers in millions Number of offenders

Best Lowest Highest

All 3.84 3.57 4.1110 to 17 1.39 1.28 1.4918 to 25 0.92 0.81 1.0326 to 65 1.57 1.37 1.78

Males 2.53 2.31 2.7510 to 17 0.90 0.81 0.9818 to 25 0.58 0.50 0.6726 to 65 1.06 0.89 1.23

Females 1.32 1.16 1.4810 to 17 0.49 0.42 0.5618 to 25 0.34 0.27 0.4026 to 65 0.52 0.40 0.63Notes:1. Source: 2003 Crime and Justice Survey, weighted data.2. 95 per cent confidence intervals presented. Uses GAD projections for population in 2003.

79

Appendix A

Table A3.7 Last year prevalence of offending among those over the age of 18, by sexPer cent committing… …in last 12 months

Males 18-65s Females 18-65s All 18-65s

Any property offence 6.0 2.7 4.3Any violent offence 4.1 2.5 3.3Any drug offence 1.4 0.6 1.0Any 'core' offence 9.3 4.8 7.5Base n 3,342 3,815 7,157

Any fraud offence 7.3 4.1 5.7Work expenses 2.8 1.0 1.8Social security benefit fraud 0.5 0.4 0.5Tax evasion 2.6 1.2 1.9Insurance fraud 1.3 0.7 1.0Credit card fraud 0.9 1.0 1.0

Handling stolen goods 8.9 6.2 7.6Buying (suspected) stolen goods 8.5 6.0 7.2Selling stolen goods 3.0 2.4 2.7

Technology crime 13.0 4.7 8.8Hacking 0.6 0.1 0.4Sending viruses 0.4 0.1 0.3Illegally downloading software/music 12.8 4.6 8.7

Any handling, fraud or technology 24.7 12.8 18.7Base n 3,293 3,738 7,031

Any core, handling, fraud, technology 30.3 16.4 23.2 Base n 3,233 3,695 6,928Notes:1. Source: 2003 Crime and Justice Survey, weighted data. Based on all respondents. Base n given is for any

offence. This differs for the various offences depending on the number of respondents.


80

Table A4.1 Number of offences committed in the last 12 months by offenders, by ageand sex

Percentages One Two Three Four Five Six or more Mean2 Median Base n

Age10 to 11 39 24 5 2 2 27 7.0 (7.0) 2 7812 to 13 33 17 10 7 8 26 9.2 (9.2) 3 14014 to 15 31 15 10 8 5 31 10.0 (9.4) 3 18216 to 17 30 15 10 9 3 33 7.4 (6.5) 3 18018 to19 35 13 5 7 6 34 8.4 (6.2) 3 10620 to 25 33 13 13 7 4 29 12.0 (8.3) 3 19626 to 35 35 17 5 6 8 29 9.0 (7.7) 2 11636 to 45 40 16 14 2 11 16 4.7 (3.9) 2 8146 and older 45 24 12 6 5 9 5.0 (5.0) 2 70

Males 35 16 9 6 6 28 9.1(7.4) 2 74110 to 17 30 17 8 7 5 33 8.2 (7.5) 3 37418 to 25 31 15 9 6 5 34 14.0 (9.5) 3 20026 and older 41 16 9 6 8 20 7.2 (6.3) 2 167

Females 36 18 11 7 6 23 6.9 (6.4) 2 40810 to 17 35 16 11 8 5 24 9.4 (9.3) 2 20618 to 25 39 10 13 9 4 25 5.1 (4.4) 3 10226 and older 34 24 11 4 7 20 5.9 (5.1) 2 100

All 35 17 10 6 6 26 8.3 (7.0) 2 1,149Notes:1. Source: 2003 Crime and Justice Survey, weighted data. Based on last year offenders2. Figures in brackets exclude drug selling.

Table A4.2 Percentage of last year offenders who had committed serious offences% last year offenders Male Female All

10-17 18-25 26+ 10-17 18-25 26+

Theft of vehicle 4 5 - 2 3 - 2Burglary 2 3 <0.5 1 - 2 2Robbery 1 - - <0.5 - - <0.5Theft from person 3 1 - 1 - - 1Assault with injury 51 35 21 48 37 31 36Selling Class A drugs 1 11 4 - 5 4 4

Any serious 55 45 24 50 42 36 41Base n 411 207 175 229 106 102 1,230Notes:1. Source: 2003 Crime and Justice Survey, weighted data. Based on last years offenders.

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Appendix A

Table A4.3 Percentage of sample who had committed a serious offence% serious offenders Males Base n Female Base n All Base n

10 to 11 10 321 3 276 6 59712 to 13 13 379 8 335 11 71414 to 15 21 331 13 302 17 63316 to 17 24 320 11 334 18 65418 to 19 15 279 8 211 12 49020 to 25 8 612 4 733 6 1,34526 to 35 3 608 2 747 3 1,35536 to 45 2 681 2 707 2 1,38846 to 65 1 1,226 <0.5 1,457 <0.5 2,682

All 5 4,757 3 5,102 4 9,859Notes:1. Source: 2003 Crime and Justice Survey, weighted data. Based on all respondents.

Table A4.4 Offending profile of last year offendersPercentages Offended in last year

Not serious Serious Prolific Serious Base nnot prolific not prolific not serious and prolific

Males 50 22 11 17 74110 to 17 (%) 38 29 10 24 37418 to 25 (%) 43 23 12 21 20026 to 65 (%) 64 15 10 10 167

Females 47 30 11 11 40810 to 17 (%) 41 35 11 13 20618 to 25 (%) 49 26 9 16 10226 to 65 (%) 51 29 13 7 100

All 49 25 11 15 1,14910 to 17 (%) 39 31 10 20 58018 to 25 (%) 45 24 11 20 30226 to 65 (%) 60 20 11 9 267Notes:1. Source: 2003 Crime and Justice Survey, weighted data. Based on last year offenders.


82

Table A4.5 Offending profile of the samplePercentages Not Offended in last year

offended Not serious Serious Prolific Serious Basein last year not prolific not prolific not serious and prolific n

Males10-11 (%) 81 8 6 1 3 30912-13 (%) 78 8 7 1 5 35814-15 (%) 62 15 11 5 9 31416-17 (%) 60 14 10 4 12 30418-19 (%) 72 10 8 4 6 27120-25 (%) 81 9 4 2 4 59926-35 (%) 88 7 2 2 2 58936-45 (%) 92 5 2 1 <0.5 66946-65 (%) 97 3 1 <0.5 <0.5 1,195

Females10-11 (%) 93 3 1 2 1 26812-13 (%) 82 9 5 2 1 32514-15 (%) 78 7 9 2 4 29116-17 (%) 81 8 7 1 2 31718-19 (%) 81 7 6 3 3 20120-25 (%) 90 6 2 <0.5 2 71926-35 (%) 94 2 2 1 <0.5 73936-45 (%) 97 1 1 <0.5 <0.5 69846-65 (%) 98 2 <0.5 <0.5 - 1,446

Males (%) 88 6 3 1 2 4,60810 to 17 (%) 71 11 8 3 7 1,28518 to 25 (%) 79 9 5 3 5 87026 to 65 (%) 93 5 1 1 1 2,453

Females (%) 94 3 2 1 1 5,00410 to 17 (%) 84 7 6 2 2 1,20118 to 25 (%) 88 6 3 1 2 92026 to 65 (%) 96 2 1 <0.5 <0.5 2,883

All (%) 91 5 2 1 1 9,612Notes:1. Source: 2003 Crime and Justice Survey, weighted data. Based on all respondents

83

Appendix A

Table A4.6 Number of serious or prolific offenders (in thousands) – confidence interv a l sSerious but not prolific Prolific but not serious Serious and prolific

High estimate Low estimate High estimate Low estimate High estimate Low estimate

All 1,020 750 480 300 650 430

Males 620 410 330 180 500 310

Females 460 280 190 80 190 90

10 to 17 450 320 170 90 300 20018 to 25 270 160 140 60 220 12026 to 65 390 210 240 100 190 70Notes:1. Source: 2003 Crime and Justice Survey, weighted data.2. Lowest and highest estimates based on 95 per cent confidence interval range. Figures given to the nearest

10,000.

Table A4.7 Proportion of offences accounted for by prolific offenders10 to 17 year olds 18 to 25 year olds 26 to 65 year olds

% of % of all % of all % of % of all % of all % of % of all % of all sample offenders offences sample offenders offences sample offenders offences

Number of offencesNone 77 - - 83 - - 95 - -One 7 32 4 6 34 3 2 39 6Two 4 17 4 2 13 2 1 18 5Three to five 5 21 9 4 22 8 1 23 13Six to nine 2 10 8 2 9 6 <0.5 6 6Ten to nineteen 2 10 15 2 9 11 <0.5 6 12Twenty or more 2 10 60 2 12 69 <0.5 7 57

100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100Notes:1. Source: 2003 Crime and Justice Survey, weighted data.


84

Table A5.1 General contact with the Criminal Justice System, by offending profile% arre s t e d % been to court % fined % community sentence % custody

Ever In the Ever In the Ever In the Ever In the Ever In the last year last year last year last year last year

Lifetime offendersAll lifetime offender 25 na 19 na 16 na 4 na 2 naSerious offence 33 na 25 na 21 na 6 na 4 naOffended six or more times2 35 na 27 na 22 na 5 na 4 na

Last year offendersAll last year offenders 24 6 15 3 12 2 4 1 2 <0.5Serious offender 28 11 16 5 12 4 6 1 3 1Prolific offender 34 8 18 4 16 3 7 2 3 <0.5Serious and prolific 38 14 18 7 16 6 9 3 4 <0.5Not serious or prolific 20 4 13 2 10 2 2 <0.5 1 <0.5Notes:1. Source: 2003 Crime and Justice Survey, weighted data.2. Respondents were not asked exact number of incidents, only if they had committed each offence once, two or

three times or four or more times. The lower values of two for ‘two or three’ and four for ‘four or more’ wereused in calculating the number of incidents.

85

Appendix A

Table A5.2 Percentage of offenders with contact with the Criminal Justice Systemregarding their offence

% where police % resulting in % resulting in Base spoke to offender court appearance a conviction n

Any property offence 9 2 1 675Vehicle-related thefts (including attempts) 18 4 2 81Other thefts 5 1 1 560Theft from work 1 - - 292Theft from school 5 2 - 201Theft from shop 17 3 2 105Other theft 14 3 3 69

Criminal damage 20 6 3 161Damage to a motor vehicle 14 6 6 76Other damage 20 6 2 111

Any violent offence 14 3 2 766Assault with injury 16 3 2 505Assault – no injury 9 2 1 466

Any drugs offence 4 3 <0.5 144Sold other drugs 2 1 <0.5 137

All offences 12 3 1 1,263Notes:1. Source: 2003 Crime and Justice Survey, weighted data. Based on last year offenders.2. Number of offenders too small for burg l a ry, ro b b e ry, theft from person, individual vehicle theft offences and selling

Class A drugs to present results separately. These have, though, been included in respective offence categories.3. ‘Don't knows’/refused included in base.


86

Table A5.3 Proportion of offences resulting in contact with the Criminal Justice System% where police spoke % resulting in % resulting in a Base

to offender court appearance conviction n

Any property offence 4 1 <0.5 4,064Vehicle-related thefts (including attempts) 6 2 1 302

Theft of a motor vehicle 7 1 1 118Theft from a vehicle (outside) 6 4 2 103

Burglary 3 <0.5 - 120Other thefts 3 <0.5 <0.5 3,134Theft from person 2 1 1 61Theft from work 3 - - 1,342Theft from school 3 1 - 651Theft from shop 3 1 1 695Other theft 3 1 1 385

Criminal damage 7 2 1 508Damage to a motor vehicle 5 2 2 169Other damage 8 2 1 339

Any violent offence 11 1 <0.5 4,094Assault with injury 19 2 <0.5 1,474Assault – no injury 6 1 <0.5 2,589

Drug offences <0.5 <0.5 <0.5 1,844Sold Class A drugs <0.5 <0.5 - 979Sold other drugs <0.5 <0.5 <0.5 865

All offences 6 1 <0.5 10,002Notes:1. Source: 2003 Crime and Justice Survey, weighted data. 2. Number of offences too small for ro b b e ry and some individual vehicle theft offences to present re s u l t s

separately. These have, though, been included in respective offence categories.

87

Appendix A


88

89

Appendix A


90

Table A6.4 Reasons for desisting from offencePercentages I knew Grew up, Friends/ Didn't want Had been Didn't want Worried Stopped Base

it was settled family friends or caught to get about using nwrong down found out family to by police caught by harsh drugs

find out police sentence

BurglaryDomestic burglary 47 48 6 8 10 13 5 9 61Commercial burglary 50 55 9 6 16 18 5 7 202

Vehicle-related thefts Theft of a motor vehicle 48 41 12 4 13 12 3 2 226Attempted theft of

a vehicle 49 43 9 3 15 17 3 10 93Theft from outside

a vehicle 56 47 5 5 6 11 3 1 307Theft from inside

a vehicle 57 53 6 5 17 14 6 5 108Attempted theft from

a vehicle 51 56 7 2 11 12 2 6 95

Other theftsTheft from person 42 33 9 10 8 9 - 4 67Theft from work 49 23 2 3 2 4 1 <0.5 955Theft from school 46 38 4 4 2 5 2 <0.5 966Theft from shop 59 42 10 7 9 15 3 1 1,247Other theft 51 35 9 6 6 10 2 2 586

Criminal damageDamage to a motor

vehicle 52 41 5 2 5 7 3 2 380Other damage 58 53 7 6 6 9 2 1 648

AssaultAssault with injury 43 35 4 2 4 4 3 <0.5 1,386Assault – no injury 42 31 3 1 1 3 2 <0.5 1,232

Drug offencesSold Class A drugs 26 40 5 3 4 19 17 31 98Sold other drugs 26 42 3 4 3 16 4 33 272Notes:1. Source: 2003 Crime and Justice Survey, weighted data. 2. ‘D o n ’t knows’ included in the base for percentages. Other reasons given that are not included in the table were

'My school found out', 'I didn't want to lose my job', 'I got a job', 'Some other reason'. Base n too small forro b b e ry.

3. Per cents sum to more than 100 because more than one answer could be given.

91

Appendix A

Table A6.5 Number of offence categories committed in the last 12 months, by age and sexPercentages One Two Three Four Five Six or seven Base n

All (%) 76 13 4 1 1 <0.5 1,26310 to 11 (%) 81 9 3 - - - 8512 to 13 (%) 63 13 6 3 - - 17014 to 15 (%) 62 19 5 3 2 1 20416 to 17 (%) 58 22 8 3 2 - 20418 to 19 (%) 63 21 8 3 1 - 11420 to 25 (%) 79 13 4 <0.5 1 - 20326 to 35 (%) 83 11 2 1 - - 12536 to 45 (%) 88 4 3 - - - 8646 to 65 (%) 92 5 - - - - 72

Males (%) 75 13 5 2 1 - 80910 to 17 (%) 62 17 7 4 2 <0.5 42318 to 25 (%) 73 16 6 1 2 - 20826 to 65 (%) 87 7 2 1 - - 178

Females (%) 77 13 3 <0.5 <0.5 <0.5 45410 to 17 (%) 67 17 4 <0.5 <0.5 <0.5 24018 to 25 (%) 75 14 5 1 - - 10926 to 65 (%) 87 8 1 - - - 105Notes:1. Source: 2003 Crime and Justice Survey, weighted data.2. Based on last year offenders. Base includes ‘don't know’ responses.

Table A6.6 Offence profile among last year offendersPercentages 10 to 17 18 to 25 26 to 65 Male Female All

Offence profile % % % % % %Violent offences only 43 33 33 34 41 37Property offences only 23 32 52 38 34 37Drug selling only 1 11 3 4 3 4Violence and property 22 10 5 13 11 12Violence and drug selling 2 2 2 2 1 2Property and drug selling 1 4 4 3 3 3Violence, property and drugselling 3 5 <0.5 3 2 2

Unknown 6 2 2 3 5 3Base n 663 317 283 809 454 1,263Notes:1. Source: 2003 Crime and Justice Survey, weighted data. Based on last year offenders.


92

Table A7.1 Whether the offence happened in the area local to the respondent and atwhat time of day the incident occurred

Percentages Vehicle- Other Criminal All Assault Assault All Allrelated thefts damage property without with violent offencesthefts offences injury injury offences

Happened in local area 66 28 54 34 51 49 50 42

Base n 91 622 151 898 419 466 885 1,777

% % % % % % % %Morning (6am to noon) 8 16 11 15 5 9 7 11Afternoon (noon to 6pm) 34 46 17 42 35 29 32 37Evening (6pm to 10pm) 22 13 19 15 27 27 26 20Night (10pm to 6am) 33 7 32 13 16 29 22 17Don’t know 2 17 18 15 15 9 12 14

Base n 91 631 157 898 431 470 910 1,808Notes:1. Source: 2003 Crime and Justice Survey, weighted data.

Table A7.2 Value of items damagedPercentages Vehicle damage Other damage All criminal damage

Amount of damage % % %Less than £5 21 15 16£5 to £20 12 20 17£21 to £50 14 13 13£51 to £100 7 12 10£101 to £500 18 11 13£501 or more 16 13 14Don't know 11 17 16

Base n 66 91 157Notes:1. Source: 2003 Crime and Justice Survey, weighted data.

93

Appendix A

Table A7.3 What was stolen and value of stolen items, by offence typePercentages Theft from work Theft from school Theft from shop Other theft All thefts

Money 1 2 1 5 5Credit cards - - - 8 1Drugs - 1 - - <0.5Something else 96 89 87 83 91

Base n 283 182 95 51 694Value of stolen property % % % % %Less than £5 68 62 57 * 62£5 to £20 19 31 8 * 20£21 to £100 7 5 17 * 9£101 to £500 6 2 5 * 7£501or more 1 - 14 * 2

Base n 266 164 80 38 607Notes:1. Source: 2003 Crime and Justice Survey, weighted data.2. All thefts also include other offences where something was stolen (burglary, robbery, theft from person, thefts

from vehicles).

Table A7.4 How well the offender knew his/her victim, by offence typePercentages Vehicle- Other Criminal All Assault Assault All All

related thefts damage property without with violent offencesthefts offences injury injury offences

% % % % % % % %Not at all 59 25 49 46 14 28 20 25Had seen before 1 4 10 5 5 9 6 6Knew by name 2 18 13 10 11 15 12 12Knew well 21 45 24 28 66 49 59 53Other 8 6 9 8 5 3 4 5

Base n 91 72 157 320 431 470 909 1,229Notes:1. Source: 2003 Crime and Justice Survey, weighted data.2. Excludes incidents against organisations or businesses (i.e. commercial ro b b e ry, commercial burg l a ry and

other thefts where the victim was an organisation or business).


94

Table A7.5 Characteristics of assault victimsPercentages Assault without injury Assault with injury All assaults

Number of victimsOne 68 62 66Two 11 12 12Three 7 9 8Four or more 13 17 15

Sex of victimMale 79 76 78Female 13 16 14Males and Females 7 8 7

Age of victim2

Under 10 9 4 7Between 10 and 15 39 34 37Between 16 and 25 33 45 38Between 26 and 45 17 16 17Between 46 and 64 1 1 1

Ethnicity of victim3

White 96 92 94Black 7 6 7Asian 6 12 8Other <0.5 5 2

Base n 376 423 799

Relationship to offender3

Partner 10 13 11Child 4 3 4Parent/sibling/other relative 29 21 26Friend 41 32 38Neighbour 3 2 2Colleague 9 5 7Someone else 18 34 24

Base n 312 319 631Notes:1. Source: 2003 Crime and Justice Survey, weighted data.2. Age of youngest victim.3. More than one answer could be given.

95

Appendix A

Table A7.6 Involvement of co-offenders, by offence typePercentages Vehicle- Other Criminal All Assault Assault All All

related thefts Damage property without with violent offencesthefts offences injury injury offences

% % % % % % % %Committed on own 38 79 56 73 78 81 80 76One other 13 7 8 10 4 5 5 7Two others 16 6 8 6 7 3 5 6Three others 27 5 7 6 6 4 5 6Four others 2 1 4 2 <0.5 1 1 1Five others 2 <0.5 2 1 2 3 2 1Six or more 2 2 15 3 2 3 3 3

Base n 91 631 157 898 431 470 910 1,808Notes:1. Source: 2003 Crime and Justice Survey, weighted data.


96

Table A7.7 Characteristics of co- offenders, by offence type Percentages Vehicle- Other Criminal All Assault Assault All All


SexMale 67 50 68 59 76 82 78 67Female 7 25 6 17 11 13 12 15Both 26 25 26 24 13 5 10 18

Age2

Under 10 - 1 1 - 7 7 8 3Between 10-15 29 47 51 42 36 31 35 39Between 16-25 74 41 51 46 31 39 33 41Between 26-45 - 6 11 13 30 25 28 1946 and over - 3 - 2 2 1 2 2

Ethnicity2

White 99 93 100 95 93 94 93 94Black 2 11 26 11 11 14 12 12Asian 1 5 3 3 31 10 14 8Other 0 2 9 3 - 7 3 3

Relationship to offender2

Partner 3 9 8 11 3 1 3 7Relative 8 4 5 5 12 31 18 11Friend 88 74 96 78 57 69 61 71Colleague 1 5 20 13 32 11 24 17Someone else knew 2 11 4 8 7 13 9 8Stranger 9 - 1 2 5 12 7 4

Base n 61 158 77 309 66 72 140 449Notes:1. Source: 2003 Crime and Justice Survey, weighted data.2. More than one answer could be given.

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Appendix A

Table A7.8 Was the offence spur of the moment or planned?Percentages Vehicle- Other Criminal All Assault Assault All All

related thefts Damage property without with violent offencesthefts offences injury injury offences

% % % % % % % %Spur of moment 58 65 82 66 90 94 92 78Planned 14 28 9 26 3 4 3 15Don’t know 17 5 8 6 4 2 3 5Refused 11 1 2 3 3 1 2 2

Base n 91 631 157 898 431 470 910 1808Notes:1. Source: 2003 Crime and Justice Survey, weighted data.

Table A7.9 Whether the offender had taken alcohol or drugs at the time of the incidentPercentages Vehicle- Other Criminal All Assault Assault All All


% % % % % % % %Drugs only 1 3 1 4 1 2 1 3Alcohol only 21 2 35 6 13 18 15 10Drugs and alcohol 10 2 5 3 1 3 2 2Neither 43 93 54 83 83 75 80 81

Base n 91 631 157 898 431 470 910 1,808Notes:1. Source: 2003 Crime and Justice Survey, weighted data


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Table A7.10 Motivation for the offencePercentages Vehicle- Other Criminal All Assault Assault All All


Bored/nothing else to do 32 11 23 15 12 5 9 12For the fun/buzz 33 5 18 9 15 3 10 9Friends encouraged me/dare 5 4 9 4 2 2 2 3Annoyed/upset by someone 2 2 22 4 53 55 53 28Revenge 8 5 22 8 13 20 16 12Upset/frustrated - - <0.5 - - - - -Self-defence - - 1 - 23 41 30 15Wanted money/item stolen 4 34 <0.5 29 - - - 15Couldn’t afford item 1 6 - 5 - - - 3Was drunk 16 2 26 6 5 10 7 6Under influence of drugs 5 1 <0.5 2 - 1 1 2Minor offence - 11 - 9 - - - 5Other reason 22 38 10 34 20 6 14 24Don’t know 12 6 7 6 1 3 2 4Don’t want to answer 22 6 2 7 3 2 2 5

Base n 91 629 157 986 431 470 910 1,806Notes:1. Source: 2003 Crime and Justice Survey, weighted data. More than one answer could be given.

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Appendix A

Table A7.11 Attitudes of respondent to the likelihood of being caught and their concernsabout the consequences

Percentages Vehicle- Other Criminal All Assault Assault All Allrelated thefts Damage property without with violent offencesthefts offences injury injury offences

How likely get caught % % % % % % % %Very likely 6 5 13 6 14 14 14 9Fairly likely 22 8 9 9 5 14 9 9Fairly unlikely 26 17 26 19 12 13 12 15Very unlikely 29 67 43 61 57 49 54 58Don’t know 5 2 9 3 10 11 10 6Refused 12 1 - 2 2 <0.5 2 2

How worried about result % % % % % % % %Very worried 7 8 4 8 2 5 4 6Fairly worried 20 9 13 11 4 7 5 8Not very worried 18 27 32 26 16 22 19 23Not at all worried 36 54 46 51 72 60 67 59Don’t know 7 1 4 2 4 5 5 3Refused 11 <0.5 1 2 1 1 1 1

Base n 91 631 157 898 431 470 910 1,808Notes:1. Source: 2003 Crime and Justice Survey, weighted data. More than one answer could be given.


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Appendix B Methodology

The 2003 Crime and Justice Survey (C&JS) was conducted jointly by the National Centre forSocial Research and BMRB Social Research. Both agencies collaborated with the Home Off i c eR e s e a rch, Development and Statistics Directorate in its design. The methodology is outlinedb e l o w. Further details can be found in the survey Technical Report (Hamlyn et al., 2004).

The sample

Main sampleThe sample was designed to give, after appropriate weighting, a re p resentative sample of peopleaged from ten to 65 living in private households in England and Wales. The sample comprised10,079 people aged from ten to 65, 4,574 of whom were in the ten to 25 age range.4 4

Addresses were selected from the Small Users Postcode Address File (PAF) using a stratified,multi-stage random probability design. At addresses with more than one householdcontaining someone between the age of ten and 65 only one household was selected usinga random selection procedure. At each selected household one person aged between tenand 65 was selected, again at random. No substitution of respondents was allowed.

Focused enumeration was used to boost young people aged from ten to 25 in the sample. Thiswas done by issuing for half of core addresses a further four addresses – the two addresses eachside on the PA F.4 5 I n t e rviewers were told to interview anyone aged from ten to 65 at the corea d d ress but only those aged 10 to 25 at adjacent addresses. Ideally, the interviewer determines ifanyone is eligible at the adjacent addresses by asking at the core address. The interviewer onlycalls at adjacent addresses if they have been told someone is eligible, there is any uncert a i n t yabout eligibility, or they have been unable to get any information at the core addre s s .

Initial estimates from the British Crime Survey suggested that 25 per cent of householdsshould contain at least one person aged from ten to 25. In practice the eligibility rate for theadjacent addresses proved to be somewhat lower at 17 per cent. The reasons for this arediscussed in Hamlyn et al. (2004).

Appendix B

44. The total number of completed interviews was 10,085. However, a small number of cases were dropped due todata errors/key missing data. A small number of respondents (N=3) were aged 66 at time of interview, but asthey were aged 65 at time of selection they have been retained.

45. The addresses, although adjacent on the PAF, may not always be geographically adjacent to the main address,though the majority are. Interviewers there f o re had to make sure they were familiar with the location of alladdresses listed for the purposes of focused enumeration.

Ethnic minority (non-white) booster sampleIn addition to the main sample, an ethnic minority (non-white) booster sample of 1,882people aged from ten to 65 was interviewed. Increasing the number of non-whiterespondents is often done in large-scale surveys since re p resentative samples generate arelatively small number of non-white respondents. To generate the booster sample, postcodesectors were first divided into high and low groups on the basis of non-white population.46 Inhigh density sectors, interviewers visited individual addresses issued for selection to identifyeligible addresses. In low density areas focused enumeration (see above) was used.Addresses were issued in sets of five (adjacent on the PAF) and interviewers could screenthese to find a suitable informant at any one of the five addresses who could tell them if anyresidents in the five addresses were non-white.

Fieldwork periodThe interviews took place between mid-January and end of July 2003.

Response ratesThe response rate for the main sample was 74 per cent. For the ethnic minority boostersample, it was somewhat lower – 45 per cent in low density areas and 53 per cent in highdensity areas (Table B.1). The main reason for non-response at eligible addresses wasrefusal by the selected individual or by the household before the respondent could beselected and non-contact.

Table B.1 Response rates Main sample Non white booster sample

Core sample Youth boost High density Low density

Issued addresses 13,250 27,560 6,300 45,600Residential and eligible 9,306 4,310 2,085 1,727Productive 6,892 3,187 1,114 772

Response rate (%) 74.1 73.9 53.4 44.7Notes:1. Calculation of this response rate includes correction for the unknown eligibility cases following

recommendations from the Office for National Statistics. The Technical Report has further details.


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46. High density areas were those with 19 per cent or more of the households headed by someone from a minorityethnic group according to the 1991 Census. Low density areas had between one per cent and 18.9 per cent.Data from the 2001 Census were not available at time of sample point selection.

The interview The interview consisted of 11 modules (detailed in Table B.2). The questionnaire wasdeveloped in consultation with re s e a rch and policy colleagues and academics.4 7 T h equestionnaire was thoroughly tested. Cognitive interviewing and pilot work was done to testc o m p rehension, understanding and relevance. This work included children and youngpeople known to have offended and taken drugs. A final dress rehearsal pilot wasundertaken to test interview length.

Table B.2 Interview contentModule Mode Age range1

Household box, socio-demographic information CAPI 10-65Area and social capital CAPI 10-65Attitudes to the Criminal Justice System CAPI 10-65 (but most questions of 16-65s only)Victimisation CAPI 10-65Anti-social behaviour A-CASI 10-25Fraud and technology crime A-CASI 18-65 (some questions10-65)Offending – count A-CASI 10-65Offending – nature CASI 10-65Drug use CASI 10-65Alcohol use CASI 10-65 (some specific questions for 10-17s)Family, education, and health CASI 10-65Note:1. This is the broad age range covered in each module. Within modules specific questions were targeted at

different age ranges.

CAPI, CASI and Audio-CASIThe entire interview questionnaire was converted into a computer programme so that theinterview could be conducted using a laptop computer. Computer-assisted interviews are acommon mode of administration for large-scale surveys. For further discussion of theadvantages of computer assisted interviews see O’Reilly et al., 1994.

The C&JS used three separate computer-assisted modes during the course of the interview –CAPI, Audio-CASI and CASI.

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Appendix B

47. In particular, questions on fraud and technology crime were developed from proposals submitted by ProfessorMike Levi (Cardiff University), Dr Mike Sutton (Nottingham Trent University), Professor Susanne Karstedt and DrStephen Farrall (Keele University). The draft questionnaire was peer reviewed by Professor David Farr i n g t o n(University of Cambridge), Bern a rd Gallagher (University of Huddersfield), Susan McVie (University ofEdinburgh), Andrew Percy (Queen's University), and Professor Janet Walker (University of Newcastle).

CAPIThe first half of the interview was conducted face-to-face with the interviewer reading thequestions from the computer screen and inputting the answers (Computer Assisted PersonalI n t e rviewing, CAPI). This approach was adopted for the least sensitive questions at thebeginning of the interview and allowed the interviewer to build rapport with the respondent.

CASI The second half of the interview was conducted as a self-completion surv e y, with theinterviewer giving the respondent the laptop to enable him/her to input his/her responsesd i re c t l y. Computer Assisted Self-Interviewing (CASI) has been widely used to collecti n f o rmation that could be re g a rded as sensitive. Self-completion techniques incre a s econfidentiality. They allow respondents to report behaviours or attitudes without having toadmit these directly to another person.

While the advantages of CASI have been well documented, there are also disadvantages.CASI requires respondents to be willing and able to use the computer and sufficiently literateto read from the screen. Most respondents, even those who have never used a computerb e f o re, are able to use CASI quite competently after some initial practice questionsundertaken with interviewer help. However, for those who are unable to read the questions,CASI cannot be used in its traditional form, and in many surveys the interviewer is instructedto conduct the self-completion as a face-to-face interview to allow respondents to continue.Although, this is usually only permitted when no one else is present, the confidentiality ofself-completion is forfeited.

Audio-CASIAudio-CASI is a variant of CASI. This allows those with literacy problems to still use theCASI facility. With Audio-CASI the questions and responses are pre - re c o rded andrespondents listen to them through headphones. At each question the sound file isautomatically triggered or can be triggered by the respondent hitting a specific key on thekeyboard. As long as respondents can recognise numbers they are able to proceed withconfidentiality maintained.

Audio-CASI had not previously been used for a large-scale household survey in Englandand Wales. The disadvantages of using it for an adult household population are oftenc o n s i d e red to outweigh the benefits. Questions and response sets must be kept shortbecause the amount of information that can be retained by a respondent is limited. Audio-CASI also increases the time it takes to complete a questionnaire and can prove frustratingfor respondents who do not require it. However, given the sensitivity of the C&JS questions,


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the fact that children as young as ten were being interviewed and that offending isc o rrelated with low levels of literacy, it was important to give respondents the option ofAudio-CASI.

One option tested was to offer Audio-CASI to respondents who indicated that they wouldhave difficulty with CASI. This did not prove successful. Respondents were sometimes tooembarrassed to admit to difficulties and often opted for interviewer administration instead.Therefore, Audio-CASI was the default option in the main stage survey. All respondents weregiven headphones and instructed to use the Audio-CASI facility. While many literaterespondents soon realised they did not need to listen to the question and responses (theyalso appeared on the screen and respondents could enter a response at any time –i n t e rrupting the voice), it allowed those needing Audio-CASI to proceed withoutembarrassment or need for interviewer help.

The Audio-CASI facility was only used for the three modules that directly asked abouto ffending behaviour. At the end of these modules the questionnaire re v e rted to norm a lCASI. The reason for this was that the content of the latter half of the questionnaire was nota p p ropriate for Audio-CASI administration (having long response sets, multiple-re s p o n s eand numerous textfills).

How was Audio-CASI received?Overall, 94 per cent of the main sample accepted both Audio-CASI and CASI elements ofthe interview (Table B.3). Only six per cent requested that the interviewer administer all self-completion elements. The most common reason for requesting interviewer administrationwas dislike of computers (61% gave this as a reason). Younger respondents were most likelyto accept the self-completion method, probably because of their greater familiarity withcomputers. Among the non-white booster sample 12 per cent opted for interv i e w e radministration. These respondents were more likely to give language problems as a reason.

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Appendix B

Table B.3 Response to the self-completion components (main sample)Percentages Male Female All

10-17 18-25 26 or older 10-17 18-25 26 or older

A-CASI CASI% % % % % % %

Accepted Accepted 98 98 91 99 96 91 94Interviewer read Interviewer read 2 2 8 1 3 9 6Accepted Interviewer read <0.5 <0.5 <0.5 - <0.5 <0.5 <0.5Accepted Refused <0.5 <0.5 <0.5 - <0.5 <0.5 <0.5Interviewer read Refused - - - - - - -Total 100 100 100 100 100 100 100

Because the C&JS was the first large-scale household survey to use Audio-CASI, respondentswere asked to what extent they listened to the questions and whether they found it useful.The results differed depending on how Audio-CASI operated. The National Centre for SocialR e s e a rch used a programme that automatically triggered the ‘voice’ each time therespondent moved to a new question. The BMRB programme required the respondent to hita specific key to trigger the ‘voice’ and so they could more easily proceed without actuallylistening to the questions – simply reading from the screen as with standard CASI. Thus,while around three-quarters of National Centre respondents listened to all questions, onlyfour in ten BMRB respondents did so. Similarly, two-thirds of National Centre respondentssaid Audio-CASI was useful compared with four in ten BMRB respondents. Yo u n g e rrespondents and those in the non-white sample were more likely to listen to questions andfind the technique useful (Table B.4).

Given that reading ability is key to the success of the normal CASI technique, respondentswere asked if they had any difficulty reading and interviewers also assessed respondents’reading ability. Interviewers assessed that only one per cent of the main sample had a lot ofd i fficulty in reading the questions, with four per cent having some diff i c u l t y. Amongrespondents, three per cent said they had everyday reading difficulties. Reading problemsw e re higher among the non-white sample, reflecting language diff e rences, and youngerrespondents. Those with self-assessed reading difficulties were particularly likely to find theAudio-CASI useful – around three-quarters did.


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Table B.4 Reading difficulties and reactions to Audio CASIInterviewer assessment of Respondent assessment Reaction to Audio CASI2

reading ability1 of reading ability1

A lot of Some Some problems Listened to all Very or fairlydifficulty difficulty in everyday life or some questions useful

Main sample (all) 1 4 3 60 5210-11-year-olds 2 16 7 73 7312-13-year-olds 1 7 6 69 6814-15-year-olds 1 4 5 63 5316-17-year-olds 1 2 2 55 5118-25-year-olds 1 3 3 53 4526 and older 1 4 1 60 50Non white sample (all) 3 12 5 66 61Notes:1. Based on all respondents.2. Asked of those who accepted the Audio-CASI module.

Involvement of others during self-completionInterviewers were asked to ensure that respondents had privacy during the self-completionmodules. While it was acceptable for others to be in the room with the respondent, theywere discouraged from looking at the screen. Table B.5 shows that in relatively few casesdid third parties look at the screen, though this was more likely for the youngestrespondents.

Interviewers had to assist respondents during the self-completion modules in eight per cent ofcases – again higher for younger respondents.

Table B.5 Involvement of others in the self-completion (main sample)

Percentages Age group10-11 12-13 14-15 16-17 18-25 26 and older All

Involvement of others in self-completionAny one present 75 66 56 35 27 21 32Parent present 69 59 49 28 9 1 16Child present 13 11 10 5 8 5 7Someone looked at the screen 23 11 8 4 3 2 5

Interviewer assistance required during self-completion No assistance required 74 89 94 98 96 92 92Some assistance required 18 9 4 2 3 6 6A lot of assistance required 9 2 2 <0.5 1 2 2

Appendix B

Interview lengthThe average length of interview was 50 minutes for the main sample, 59 minutes for thenon-white boost sample. However, interview length was highly variable. Some interv i e w slasted in excess of 90 minutes while others were less than 30. Length was influenced byd e g ree of involvement in offending and drug use. Those who had taken a drug orcommitted an offence in the last 12 months had an interview averaging about 60 minutes.

Fieldwork proceduresAll interviewers working on the survey were personally briefed about re q u i rements andprocedures. A leaflet and letter were prepared for respondents explaining the backgroundto the survey and what their involvement would entail. Participation was entirely voluntary.Those who did participate were off e red a £10 voucher in recognition of their time andcontribution. While the use of such payments is not common in general household surveys,and evidence on the impact on response rates is at best ambiguous, it was felt the burdenon potential respondents in the longitudinal design should be recognised.

WeightingGiven the complex sample design, a sophisticated weighting system was adopted to restorethe re p resentativeness of the sample. Weights were separately computed for the coresample, and the youth and non-white booster samples. Sampling and non-response weightsw e re used. Weights were then optimised by comparing weighted data to the Censusi n f o rmation on age, sex and region. For analysis purposes, the core and youth boostsamples have been combined with the latter being down-weighted as appropriate. Technicaldetails about the weighting process are in Hamlyn et al. (2004).

Methodological considerationsSeveral methodological issues warrant discussion as they bear on how the results presentedin this report are interpreted.

Sample coverageThe C&JS only covers people aged from ten to 65 resident in private households in England andWales. It omits those living in communal or institutional establishments, such as custodialinstitutions, residential homes, hospitals and hostels, and the homeless. A feasibility studycommissioned by the Home Office concluded that a full-scale communal establishment survey wasnot warranted. The inclusion of such establishments would not significantly impact on overallo ffending and drug use estimates and to be implemented successfully in some establishments there s e a rch instrument and pro c e d u res would have re q u i red substantial modification (the feasibilitystudy re p o rt can be accessed at http://www. h o m e o ff i c e . g o v. u k / rd s / o ff e n d i n g 1 . h t m l ) .


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Those under the age of ten and over the age of 65 were omitted for various reasons. Ten isthe age of criminal responsibility in England and Wales. The proportion of children youngerthan this engaged in criminal behaviour is likely to be very small. Furthermore any attemptto directly interview children aged under ten would have re q u i red a diff e rent appro a c h .Those aged over 65 were omitted because again it is likely that only a very smallproportion would be involved in criminal behaviour.

Sampling errorAs with any sample survey the results are subject to sampling error – i.e. the results from asample selected from the population could differ from those that would be obtained if thee n t i re population had been surveyed, or another sample taken. The degree of erro rdepends on the size and design of the sample and the size of the estimate of interest. TheC&JS has a relatively large sample but the estimates will still be subject to error. Statisticalt h e o ry enables the calculation of the degree of error for any estimate. Table B.6 belowillustrates the degree of error associated with different estimates and sample sizes (assuminga design factor of 1.2). So for example, if an estimate is ten per cent based on a sample of100 then one can say one is 95 per cent confident the 'true' value (had the population beeninterviewed) falls within the range of plus or minus seven percentage points (i.e. between3% and 17%). However, had a sample of 1,000 been interviewed the error would be muchsmaller – plus or minus just two percentage points (i.e. between 8% and 12%).

This re p o rt draws on the statistically robust and significant results. Where diff e re n c e sbetween subgroups are highlighted the differences are statistically significant at the five percent level unless otherwise stated. This means one can be 95 per cent confident that thedifference holds in the population.

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Appendix B

Table B.6 Illustration of 95% confidence interval rangesSample estimates - percentages

5% or 95% 10% or 90% 20% or 80% 30% or 70% 40% or 60% 50%

95% confidence interval - percentage points +/- Sample size +/- +/- +/- +/- +/- +/-100 5 7 9 11 12 12200 4 5 7 8 8 8400 3 4 5 5 6 6800 2 2 3 4 4 41,000 2 2 3 3 4 45,000 1 1 1 2 2 2Notes:1. Estimates of the range are based on 95 per cent confidence intervals, assuming a design factor of 1.2.

Figures rounded.

Non-response biasAlthough the response rate of 74 per cent for the main sample is relatively high for anational survey covering such sensitive areas, it may be that non-respondents differ in somekey respects to those who do respond. A non-response model was developed and used inthe construction of weights. This model utilised information collected from interviewers aboutthe type of property and the area in which it was located to predict response (see Hamlyn etal. (2004) for a technical discussion).

Offence coverageThe survey does not cover all legal offences. In particular very serious offences includinghomicide and sexual offences are omitted. The main focus of the C&JS was on 20 coreoffences, and the wording of questions on these was carefully considered to reflect legaldefinitions. However, it should be recognised that within any of these legal categories thenature of the incident could vary greatly.

The survey also covered some other offences – for example, fraud and handling stolengoods, but in less detail and these are only briefly reported on here.

Accuracy of responsesA key issue is whether respondents give truthful and accurate answers when asked abouttheir offending. Some may deliberately conceal their involvement in offending, while somemay choose to exaggerate. Others may be unable to remember whether incidents fell withinthe defined recall period, or may find it difficult to recollect exactly how many times theyhad offended. Despite these potential problems, it is generally accepted that self-reports are


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reliable and valid indicators of delinquency and offending (Farrington et al. , 1 9 9 6 ;Hindelang et al., 1981).

Several measures were taken in the C&JS to encourage respondents to provide truthful andaccurate answers. Interviewers reminded respondents of the confidentiality of their answersand CASI and Audio CASI were used to reinforce this. The questionnaire was designed toencourage respondents to admit to behaviours and the importance of the recall period wasi m p ressed upon them. While these measures cannot guarantee all respondents pro v i d e daccurate and truthful answers, the evidence is encouraging. At the end of the interview 97per cent of respondents said they answered all questions on offending truthfully with afurther three per cent saying they had answered most truthfully. The figures are similar ford rug use. Table B.7 shows the results by age and sex. The group that prompt the mostc o n c e rn are males aged from 16 to 17 – with a slightly lower 91 per cent saying theyanswered all offending questions truthfully.

The analysis presented in this report is based on all respondents regardless of whether theysaid they answered all offending questions truthfully or not. Analysis was undert a k e nexcluding those who said they had not been completely truthful. However, this did not effectthe overall last year prevalence rates or alter the age related patterns.

Table B.7 Honesty in answering offending and drug use questions (main sample)Offending questions Drug use questions

All truthful Most truthful All truthful Most truthful

Males10-11 year olds 96 4 98 212-13 year olds 95 4 96 314-15 year olds 96 2 93 516-17 year olds 91 7 91 718-25 year olds 94 5 93 526 and older 97 2 97 2

Females10-11 year olds 97 2 98 112-13 year olds 98 1 97 314-15 year olds 96 3 94 516-17 year olds 98 1 95 418-25 year olds 98 2 95 426 and older 99 1 98 2

Appendix B


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Appendix C Offence screener questions

The 20 core offence screener questions are detailed below.

Vehicle theftsO1StVh Now thinking about things you may have done, even if it was a long time ago.

Have you EVER stolen or driven a vehicle without permission, even if the ownergot it back?1. Yes2. No3. Don’t know4. Don’t want to answer

O1AtVh Have you EVER tried, but failed, to steal a vehicle, or drive it away withoutpermission?1. Yes2. No3. Don’t know4. Don’t want to answer

O1OfVh [Apart from anything else you have already mentioned] have you EVER stolenany parts off the outside of a vehicle?1. Yes2. No3. Don’t know4. Don’t want to answer

O1InVh [Apart from anything else you have already mentioned,] have you EVER stolenanything from inside a vehicle?1. Yes2. No3. Don’t know4. Don’t want to answer

O1AtBk [Apart from anything else you have already mentioned,] have you EVER tried,but failed to steal anything from inside or parts off the outside of a vehicle?1. Yes2. No3. Don’t know4. Don’t want to answer

O1CDVh [ A p a rt from anything else you have already mentioned,] have you EVERdamaged any vehicle in any way on purpose, for example, by scratching it orbreaking a window?1. Yes2. No3. Don’t know4. Don’t want to answer

Burglary and Criminal DamageO1BgDw The next questions are about some other things you may have done.

Have you EVER gone into someone's home without their perm i s s i o nbecause you wanted to steal or damage something?1. Yes2. No3. Don’t know4. Don’t want to answer

O1BgND Now thinking about other types of buildings such as a factory, office, shop,hospital, school etc.Have you EVER gone into any of these types of buildings without permissionbecause you wanted to steal or damage something?1. Yes2. No3. Don’t know4. Don’t want to answer


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O1Burn [ A p a rt from anything else you have already mentioned,] have you EVERdamaged anything that didn't belong to you on purpose, for example, byburning, smashing, or breaking it?Please include things like rubbish bins, bus shelters, trains etc.1. Yes2. No3. Don’t know4. Don’t want to answer

Robbery and theft from personO1RobC Have you EVER used force, violence or threats against anyone in ord e r t o

steal from a shop, petrol station, bank or any other business?1. Yes2. No3. Don’t know4. Don’t want to answer

O1RobP [ A p a rt from anything else you have already mentioned,] have you EVER usedf o rce, violence or threats against anyone in ord e r to steal something from them?1. Yes2. No3. Don’t know4. Don’t want to answer

O1TPer Have you, w i t h o u t using force, violence or threats, EVER stolen anythingsomeone was car rying or wearing, for example by taking something from theirhand, pocket or bag?1. Yes2. No3. Don’t know4. Don’t want to answer

Other theftsO1TWrk [ A p a rt from anything you have already mentioned,] have you EVER stolen

anything from where you work, or used to work?1. Yes2. No3. Don’t know4. Don’t want to answer

Appendix C

O1TSch [ A p a rt from anything you have already mentioned,] have you EVER stolenanything from any of your schools or colleges?1. Yes2. No3. Don’t know4. Don’t want to answer

O1TShp [ A p a rt from anything you have already mentioned,] have you EVER stolenanything from a shop without using force, violence or threats?1. Yes2. No3. Don’t know4. Don’t want to answer

O1TOth [ A p a rt from anything you have already mentioned,] have you EVER stolenanything else?1. Yes2. No3. Don’t know4. Don’t want to answer

ViolenceThe next few questions are about incidents that did not involve stealing or tryingto steal. For these next questions, please include your family and people youknow, as well as strangers.

O1Vinj Have you EVER used force or violence on anyone on purpose, for example,by scratching, hitting, kicking or throwing things, which you think injured themin some way?1. Yes2. No3. Don’t know4. Don’t want to answer


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O1ViNI [Apart from these incidents,] have you EVER used force or violence on anyoneon purpose, which you think did NOT injure them in any way?1. Yes2. No3. Don’t know4. Don’t want to answer

DrugsO1Adrg Have you EVER sold Class A drugs, such as heroin, cocaine, crack or ecstasy,

to anyone, including friends?1. Yes2. No3. Don’t know4. Don’t want to answer

O1ODrg Have you EVER sold any other illegal drugs, such as cannabis, to anyone,including friends?1. Yes2. No3. Don’t know4. Don’t want to answer

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Appendix C


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